


Disparate Pathways

by Eilinelithil



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drama & Romance, Dubious Consent, Eventual Smut, Extortion, F/M, First Time, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, UST, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:42:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22111267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil
Summary: Gold has a past, a past that he has rejected, but it seems one that will not let him go.  Belle, daughter of Governor Maurice French has been kidnapped, along with her mother, and just as the authorities raid the organization that is holding her hostage, decides to make her own bid for freedom, unknowingly derailing an undercover sting, and Agent Milnor has not choice but to take her into 'protective custody,' but is he all that he seems?  As the threads of the story grow more tangled and the threat to Belle, and to Gold, her appointed protector, grow ever more real, a growing, mutual attraction makes everything far more desperate and far too personal for Gold to ignore what he knows to be the truth.
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Comments: 56
Kudos: 30





	1. Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Witness Protection](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21896680) by [Eilinelithil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil). 



> This is the promised (or should that be 'threatened') remix, with all of the backstory I held in my head slotted into its rightful place. If at all possible, it's a little bit darker than the original... and I can't promise that everyone will survive.

After a while, the machines became like a kind of white noise, or maybe it was brown, he never was sure of the difference, and he didn’t really care all that much to want to find out, but after a while, with the weight of his sorrow, his guilt, and a good dose of jet lag to help it all along, he caught himself nodding, and at first he tried to stop himself from succumbing to sleep. He’d travelled so far, after all, to be there, to spend time together - somewhat of a macabre ritual, but it kept him honest; made him remember.

_ “It’s different, isn’t it..? When it’s one of your own?” _

The voices whirled around in his head, haunted like wild and cruel dervishes intent on the destruction of his balance; his emotions.

_ “Oh, p-lease!” _

His breathing quickened; unconscious response, because what lucidity remained to him told him he was safe. Here of all places, he was certainly safe.

“ _ Let’s finish it!” _

It was a roaring, rushing sound that followed the click, like thunder, only closer, and the heat of it traveled from his mind to his hand, his fingers; those curled around the cool, still flesh of another’s. It echoed around him, like a tin can dropped in an empty bathroom, recorded in normal time but then played back at a tenth of the speed, long, low… and loud, so loud…

He jerked awake with a gasped breath. His eyes, still unfocused, lifted immediately to the screen to stare at the line of light that crossed from left to right, a regular hitch and dip as it reached the middle of the one side, and then the other. He watched as though fearing a break in the rhythm. No change… steady.

The door behind him - and nowhere else would he ever have sat with his back to a door - opened and closed quietly, and half turning, he rose part way before the woman’s voice called out in quiet admonition.

“Och, nay Lad.” There was a pause of barely a moment before she went on, “Stay’n yer seat.”

He lowered himself wearily back into the chair and ran a hand that trembled over his face.

“Ah’ve tea for ye, and a wee bite.” She crossed the room and set the tray she was carrying on a small table to his right.

“Tapadh leibh,” he murmured absently.

His aunt tipped her head to one side, giving him a fond look, and reaching out to brush her fingers softly through his hair. It was a fond gesture, a soft one, and he offered her a tired smile.

“Nice t’hear ye dunnae forget,” she said softly. “Y’know, this couldae waited until the morrow.”

He shook his head, but said, “I’ll never forget. Not so long as I live.”  _ or he does. _ “I made that promise, and it’s not one I’ll break. Ever.”

Aunt Lindsay sighed, but nodded. “Aye, well,” she said, tugging the table a little closer and then reaching over to adjust the blankets covering the figure on the bed, most likely, he realized, for something to do. “Eat up, then get t’bed. Morn’ll come soon enough, and there’s work t’be done.”

“And it will be,” he promised. “So why don’t you get to your bed. I’ll wash the dish and the cup before I go.”

She frowned softly, “Before ye go…?”

“To bed,” he lied. “I’ll make sure everything’s in order.”

She shared a sorrowing smile with him. She knew, as well as Gold, that he’d be gone by morning.


	2. When Now Is The Wrong Time

Jefferson Milnor walked around six blocks out of his way, making turns at random, and heading into a late night drug store to buy himself a pack of gum and some tylenol, just to make sure he wasn’t being followed, before he headed to the seedier side of town, where ladies, and gents of the night propositioned him on street corners, and told him he didn’t really want to head into the gaudy strip joint he was headed for, and really wanted to go home with them instead.

He turned them all down, and silently paid his entry fee, passing beneath the neon, animated flashing lights that marked the building he sought, before slipping into the assigned booth. He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the wall, totally ignoring the erotic dancer that could be seen through the gap in the grate that separated her from the clientele.

“The weather’s on the change, Ice clouds invading,” the voice from the next booth murmured softly, and Jefferson took a deep breath, counting to ten in his head before he even thought about answering. He hated this… the necessity for it, the cliche of it all that his handler insisted playing into. 

“Pressure lines joint in faint discord and the stormwatch brews,” he answered, all the while thinking _Why ruin a great song by using it as a fucking code._

“Are you safe?” his handler asked.

“Until I came here,” Jefferson answered, ill tempered. “What’s wrong with the fucking library every once in a while? Or hell, take me to see a goddamn movie!”

“I see your language hasn’t gotten any better since you’ve been under.”

“You haven’t seen these people, Rab,” Jefferson said, “They’d make a saint swear.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Rab said. He paused then, waiting while there was a lull in the music as the dancers switched, and didn’t speak until the heavy beat started pounding through Jefferson’s body again. “You’ve seen the girl? The mother?”

“Yeah,” Jefferson confirmed, “But… they’re keeping them under lock and key, especially the girl, and separate. I don’t know how the hell you think this is going to go down.”

“Well you better think of something fast,” Rab said quietly. “It’s tomorrow.”

“ _What_ !” Jefferson spat the single word as though it were the worst kind of curse word _ever_ , following up with another string of expletives, before calming enough to say,“You can’t. No, absolutely not.”

“Tomorrow, Jeff.” Rab repeated, “The Governor won’t wait any more, and who can blame him. This is his wife and daughter we’re talking about.”

Jefferson shook his head even though he knew Rab couldn’t see him. “Force their hand like this and it’s gonna get ugly fast. You go back and tell the Governor that.”

“He won’t be swayed,” Rab said. “It’s going down tomorrow, Sunshine, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“The _hell_ there isn’t,” Jefferson said, and started to get up.

“Don’t fuck this up, Agent.”

“Don’t _agent_ me,” he snarled, and before Rab could do anything about it, and completely uncaring of the establishment’s policy of one patron per booth, he pushed in through the door of his handler’s booth, grabbed him by the lapels, and pinned him to the flimsy wall. “What the fuck is the point in me spending _years_ UC with this band of fucking maniacs if no one is going to listen to my advice?”

“Take it easy, Jefferson,” Rab said, grasping his wrists and trying to push the taller, stronger man away. “I didn’t come here to get your advice. I came here as a courtesy to tell you that the takedown is happening tomorrow.”

“Take it easy?” Jefferson spat, and shifted his grasp on his handler to press an arm across his throat, making Rab’s scrabbling against his hold a little more frantic, more urgent. “Have you _any_ idea the kind of crap I’ve been through! Years and years of it, and here we stand with the chance to take these motherfuckers down and for good this time, and you tell me my go/no go role in all this has been not only undermined, but tossed out of the fucking window! Well fuck you. Fuck you _and_ the horse you rode in on.”

He let Rab go, and watched as his handler bent over, leaning his hands on his knees, and trying to catch his breath.

“I’m sorry, man,” Rab gasped, “truly. I didn’t call this and I tried to give you time, honestly.”

Jefferson shook his head. “I don’t want to hear your excuses, Rab. I’ve busted my _balls_ these last two weeks… took fucking risks to make sure to get everything in place, _and_ keep the French women safe. Well I’m _telling_ you, not _asking_ . Wait. Two more days, three at most. If the cavalry comes in tomorrow we will _lose_ our only chance of taking the head of this rancid pit of vipers. She will go to ground and it might be _another_ ten years before we catch the slightest hint of her again.”

He was pacing as he spoke, his thumb nail up against his teeth, the words tumbling around it, and his body hummed with pent up frustration. He already knew Rab’s answer.

“We’ll take some of them in. Someone will turn, make a deal for a reduced sentence, and we’ll use it to haul them all in, every single one of them, including Duneach.”

Jefferson just shook his head again, and closed his eyes with a sigh, finally ceasing his pacing, and just stood with his head down, breathing hard as he opened and closed his hands, like someone itching for a fight.

“I’ll send you a heads up at thirty minutes.” Rab said softly. “Just tell me you know how to get out and maintain the--”

“--integrity of my cover, yeah… thanks for nothing. I know the fucking drill. I got out the last time you morons fucked it up, and no one on the inside the wiser.” Jefferson spat.

“You and I both know that’s not quite true.”

Jefferson looked up at Rab, meeting his eyes steadily, before he murmured a soft, “Good as.”

“You make me laugh, Milnor,” Rab said, “You really do. You stand there for a good thirty minutes ranting at me about how it’s all going to go to crap, and at the last attempt at taking these guys out, you only went and read in perhaps the single most dangerous person you could possibly have revealed yourself to.”

“No,” Jefferson said flatly and with a certainty in his voice. “Not true. He’s out, and he won’t go back. He’s not a risk.” _Not like that, anyway._

“You don’t know that,” Rab said.

_The red-head had long since fled, as Jefferson made his way down from his higher point as carefully and as swiftly as he could while making sure there were no more hostiles about. The man writhed on the ground, conscious, surprisingly still trying to get legs beneath him, to walk on his ruined ankle._

_Jefferson reached his side, kicking the man’s gun away, trying to put the man at ease, assure him that everything would be all right, but the man thought nothing of his own safety; his own comfort and health - only of the boy’s._

Jefferson sighed, pushing away the memory and the way his own emotions responded to it; knowing that the only way to have saved the man’s life was exactly as he did - to take him down him _self_ with a non fatal shot.

“ _Please...” the man whispered through the agony of the injury Jefferson had given him. “...help me save my son.”_

“Yes,” he said softly. “I do.”


	3. Sins Of the Father

Everything hurt. Belle had no idea how long she’d been locked in the room she was in, and fear gripped her with piercing talons that she couldn’t ever remember feeling, at least not since she was a little girl. That didn’t count. It was different then. She was a child.

Now, she was an adult, and she would _not_ give in to the fear no matter _how_ hard it bit, couldn’t give in… if she did… if…

Belle sat down on the only piece of furniture in the room - a wooden slatted bed, with a mattress that was barely thick enough even to be _called_ a mattress, with a grubby pillow and a threadbare blanket thrown over it - and gave in to the tears that were making her chest hurt to hold them inside.

She forced herself to stop abruptly, rekindling the nausea in her belly, when she heard the metallic rasp of the key in the lock. In spite of her wanting to be strong, she scooted back into the corner of the wall against which stood the bed, and curled into a protective little ball.

To no avail.

The man that entered the room wasn’t one she remembered seeing before. Not that she’d seen many people since they’d marched her off the steps of city hall and into the waiting car…

_“I really don’t think that’s what he meant at all,” laughed Coleltte, slipping her arm though Belle’s and Belle leaned briefly against her mother._

_“I know,” she said and let out a laugh of her own, “but it was still funny.”_

The two women had laughed together as they descended two or three of the steps, but the laughter petered out as two large men in ill fitting suits - although that observation was one of hindsight - came to either side of them, taking a hold of their arms in grasps that were a little too tight to be protective, as they sometimes had to suffer.

_“Keep walking,” one of the men hissed. “Let’s not draw any attention to ourselves.”_

_Collette frowned at Belle, and tightened her arm against hers, and Belle bit her lip, her eyes telling her mother that she didn’t believe that this was quite right._

_“I wasn’t aware of any current threat to--”_

_“Keep moving!” the other man said, and Belle gasped as she suddenly felt the press of something hard against the side of her ribs. She felt her steps falter, and her fear mounted._

Just like that. It had been that easy for the two of them to be taken, and no one the wiser. They’d been frogmarched to a waiting car and bundled into the back, still sandwiched between the two men; brought to this place, and had been here ever since.

At first she and her mother had been together, but then, a few days ago, Belle had been dragged away from her mother, and thrown into a room of her own. That was when she felt the fear beginning to sharpen, to mount, but as much as she feared, she also felt anger, and along with it, a certain degree of defiance.

It had earned her nothing but rough treatment from the people that came to her, to check on her, to bring her the food that passed as her meals, and to take her for her scheduled ‘bathroom breaks.’ The longer it went on, the more fearful it was making her.

The newcomer crossed the room with rapid steps and she shrank against the wall. It seemed he didn’t care, because he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her upright, barely giving her a chance to get her feet under her, and she stumbled, scraping her knee against the floor before he hauled her upright again.

“Enough of your nonsense,” he said. “It’ll be much easier if you don’t fight.”

She pulled against him at that, as if his words triggered her to do the exact opposite. For her troubles he suddenly swung her until her back hit the wall beside the closed door and stepping in close, he wrapped a large fist around her throat to pin her in place. She clawed at his hand, fighting for breath.

“I told you,” he said unkindly, and leaned down to look into her face as he snarled, “No more nonsense. If I had my way, I wouldn’t have waited this long, but I did, and now my patience is thin indeed.”

Belle’s struggles began to fade as she started to feel light headed from lack of air. _Patience…_ she shook as she wondered why he needed to be patient, what did he have to do with her, or she to him. She assumed he was merely another one of her captors.

Just as the edges of her vision began to darken he released her, as though he knew exactly what she was feeling. He caught her in his arms only to turn her and drag her out, drag her away and through the door. Her legs felt like jello, the rest of her limp and she felt tears prickling behind her eyes, but was determined _not_ to give him the satisfaction of seeing them fall.

“Where are you taking me?” she managed to ask, and he chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound, but otherwise, he did not answer her, just manhandled her up a flight of stairs to the uppermost floor of the house, and into a sitting room where, in addition to the regular furniture, a desk with a large computer monitor stood ready, showing an office, and an empty chair at a desk. 

Her attention, however, was immediately drawn to one of the other figures in the room. Her mother. She looked as beaten and downtrodden as Belle felt, and she immediately began struggling against the hold of her captors, just as did Belle, each trying to reach each other.

“How touching!”

From the far side of the sitting room, beside the window, came a voice that made Belle shiver. It was a voice she’d heard before, a long time ago, when she was only a child, and hearing it in the present threw her right back to the terrified girl she had been that night.

“You!” she gasped, and her voice shook. “You… you can’t be here. You can’t…”

“Oh, but I am.” The red haired woman began to walk toward her, then nodded to the man holding her, and to the chair. “I’m flattered that you remember. Perhaps that will make this _so_ much easier.” There was a pause as the woman crossed the room. She sighed then, and as she tapped a number of keys on the laptop, she added, “Such a pity. I do so prefer difficult.”

Belle was about to answer, trying to come up with something suitably snarky, but the breath was knocked out of her as the man still holding her pushed her into the chair facing the computer, and when she tried to rise in defiance, thrust her back down into it again, and this time kept his hand on her shoulder to keep her in place.

The flash of movement on the computer screen pulled her attention from the bull of a man that was still pinning her in place and she finally stopped struggling with him as a woman addressed them all.

_“Everyone’s here. Excellent, that should save time.”_

“Mother Duneach.” The redhead greeted the woman that was settling herself into her seat at the other end of the live feed.

Belle’s already chilled blood ran colder yet, as she recognized the woman from her childhood transgression of peering through cracks in the door, and she did not appear to have changed, in spite of the intervening years. The woman’s hair still swung around her shoulders, as dark as ever, as were her eyes. The wide smile that didn’t fit her face was still framed by full red lips, and her cheekbones were sharp and pronounced, painting her as shrewd as ever she had seemed to Belle, even at a tender age, and she remembered the words the woman had spoken, _"There’d be a price of course. Something like this can’t be arranged without there being… a sacrifice.”_

Belle shivered. Was this the price? Was she the sacrifice?

As if the other woman knew what she was thinking, she turned her attention immediately to Belle, ignoring the greeting that the redhead had offered.

_“Hello, dearie,” she said. “Well, look at you… all grown up…”_


	4. Homecoming

By the time Gold got home, it was late. Gone 2am. The flight from Glasgow to Amsterdam had been delayed and so he missed his connection, managing by sheer luck to get on the next flight into Boston Logan. Yawning, bone weary but wide awake he dropped his hold all beside the foot of the stairs and for a moment debated whether to head to the kitchen for tea, or to his study to partake of a glass of his best whiskey - the kind he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk.

In the end he opted for the tea. Whiskey wouldn’t do him any good anyway. He’d already had more than enough cheap crap on the flights and all it had done was to give him a headache. He switched on the kitchen light, wincing at the harshness of it, and set about filling the kettle, and spooning the leaves into the tea pot. Then he pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table to wait for the water to boil. He could hear the neighborhood cat outside on the patio as usual, yowling for attention, and rather than irritating him, that, and the familiar sounds of Storybrooke began to soothe the pain and fury in his aching heart.

It was always worse after a visit with his son. The guilt, the anger, the feelings of hopelessness, it all met in the middle of his soul like a perfect storm; brought everything back. It reminded him of what he used to be.

“No more,” he whispered into the empty kitchen, though in truth he knew he was little better in many ways. He practically owned Storybrooke, and everyone hated him for it; feared him for his uncompromising nature. Either that or they tried to ingratiate themselves with exaggerated obsequiousness. If anything, that irritated him more. Just about the only people he could count on to behave honestly with him were the mayor, the sheriff, and the worst of all - the interfering busy body known to most as _Mother Superior._ He despised her most of all.

While he waited for the water, he reached out to the small pile of mail that had been carefully placed on the kitchen counter, flipping through and discarding the numerous pieces of junk mail, setting aside the bills that needed to be paid, and the checks from his tenants that needed to be deposited into the bank. Few enough of those, which meant that in the coming days he would likely be making the rounds of those in danger of falling into arrears, as well as the few who already were. Then there were the minutes of the last town council meeting in a thick manila envelope hand addressed in Regina Mills handwriting as though to tell him that he was getting special treatment. Attached was a simple _with compliments_ slip on which the mayor ‘requested’ that he please approve the minutes so that they could be entered into record. He tossed them aside with considerable disdain. He would read through them later, when he was less tired, though he had no doubt that they would contain _some_ inaccuracies. They always did.

The kettle boiled and he climbed to his feet, tipping the water into the pot and leaving it to steep while he prepared his cup, and decided to pop a couple of slices of bread into the toaster. It was little enough, but as he meant to at least _try_ to sleep, it should keep him going until morning.

Speaking of morning, he would need to catch up on what he had missed in the last few days. He picked up his phone and composed a brief text message to McCalman to meet him at the shop at ten the following morning.

The toast sprang up from the toaster, and he pulled out the butter and spread it thickly onto the toast, using up the last of it from his last visit to the farmer’s market. He made a mental note to buy more as soon as he could. It was far superior to any store-bought butter. He poured his tea, and brought both the toast and his drink back to the table, idly scrolling through his email while he ate, and sipped the steaming liquid.

Suddenly, everything stopped, and what relaxation he had managed to achieve disappeared in a single chilled heartbeat.

The email had been automatically forwarded from an address he kept of which few knew. In fact, to his knowledge, only his aunts, McCalman and undercover FBI agent Jefferson Milnor, to whom he’d given the address for use in emergencies only - literally life and death situations on pain of his _own_ should he use it without just cause.

There was no body text in the email, only a subject line, which read, _VNNGLPQJJKGDY!_

To anyone else it would appear as spam, a junk mail that would be completely overlooked, likely even consigned to the trash folder, but to Gold it transported him back to the time he tried _so_ hard to disown; to distance himself.

Toast forgotten, he got to his feet and hurried to his study, turning on the desk lamp and grabbing a sheet of paper on which he began to write, to make a grid of the alphabet, repeating over and over again but starting with the next letter of the alphabet on each row. Once the grid was complete, he wrote out the letters of the subject line at the bottom of the page, and above them, he wrote the words DARK ONE almost twice through, careful to make sure that the letters lined up with one another. Then referring to the grid, he deciphered the brief message, carefully, one letter at a time until the message stood out starkly in black and white. The moment he hoped would never happen; the calling in of a debt that he did not believe could _ever_ be repaid.

The message read: _I NEED YOUR HELP!_


	5. Takedown

It was entirely too quiet and it made Jefferson nervous. He’d tried to find out from some of the others what was going on upstairs, but no one had been willing to share. All he knew was that they’d taken both the women up to the top floor of the house. He figured that didn’t bode well.

It certainly didn’t make his life any easier. If Rab was true to his word then some time today, the joint might of the police and the FBI’s HRT, and probably, just to add icing to the shit cake, a whole squadron of SWAT, was going to descend on the house like the wrath of God.

He checked his phone, just to make sure that it was on, with plenty of power remaining, and that he had a signal. The last thing he needed was to miss the heads up that his handler had promised to send him.

“Hey, Jared.” He started slightly when one of the other guys, Ace - a shortened version of his full name - called out Jefferson’s undercover persona. “Expecting a call from your boyfriend?”

He gave the man a sour smile, recognizing that he was being mocked and shot back in return, “Least I _have_ one,” and made a rapid up and down motion with his fisted right hand before pointing at the guy who’d called him out.

Predictably the ‘hard man’ took immediate offense, and started toward Jefferson, his eyes full of the intention to hurt. He stood his ground. He was taller than the other man by a few inches, even though the guy was heavier set, forcing the other man to look up as soon as they came toe to toe.

“Was there something?” Jefferson asked sarcastically, then lowering his voice to a dangerous growl added, “Because unless there is… _Horace_ … then get the fuck out of my face.”

“Tough words, pretty boy,” Ace snarled, “but do you got the balls to back em up?”

Faster than the man evidently anticipated, Jefferson grabbed his hand and pulled the pudgy fingers against the front of his jeans, trusting in the shock tactics to keep himself from harm.

“What do _you_ think, Ace?” he asked, leaning down until he was nose to nose with the other man. “Care to take it for a spin?”

The man backpedaled, pulling away so fast that he almost fell over his own feet in his haste to put some space between himself and Jefferson, snatching his hand away and out of Jefferson’s grasp.

“You stay away from me, you fucking freak!” Ace squeaked.

“Methinks the man protesteth too much,” Jefferson teased. “After all, you were the one that came at me first.”

“Can it, you two!” Jefferson half turned at the sound of the other voice, a tall, leather-clad man with a scruffy beard and a missing hand came out into the hallway from one of the downstairs rooms. “Jared, you’re wanted upstairs. Ace, _get_ in here… quit baiting the bloody man!”

Glad for a reprieve, even if it did come from Jones, an unwelcome bastard at the best of times, Jefferson headed for the stairs and started to climb, on the way up thinking to himself that ‘upstairs’ was a fairly vague description of who needed him, given that there were two floors to the house in addition to the first floor. Not to mention the basement, which technically meant the house was a four storey house and— _What the ever loving fuck are you_ thinking, _Jefferson. Head in the game, man!_ He cut off his own racing mind; a sure sign of stress.

He made the first landing and began methodically making his way around, room by room, opening each one and checking inside, not just for the girl and her mother, but also for an alternative way out, should his chosen route become inaccessible. He couldn’t explain why, but there was a large part of him that had a _really_ bad feeling around the way the day was going.

Crossing a room, he found a window that looked out onto a low balcony, and looking up he saw what looked like similar from above. It would do in a pinch, but it was risky. One slip and he’d be looking at a shattered ankle; broken leg… he decided he just better make sure that he could get out by the method of his first choice.

“Oy! Jared,” Jones’ voice sounded from behind him, irritated. “I told you upstairs.”

“This _is_ upstairs,” Jefferson snarked back. “And you weren’t actually that specific, you—” Movement in the corner of his eye made him forget what he had been saying. Someone’s sights? Careless, but then, no… he hadn’t had a message yet. Jones evidently picked up on it and came from the doorway to stand beside him.

“What do you see?” Jones asked.

Jefferson shook his head, about to say nothing - perhaps it had been his imagination after all - when a patch of shadow moved close by the rear wall of the yard, unnatural, not like the clouds passing across the moon. His heart began to pound in his chest. They were coming.

“Bloody hell!” Jones snarled urgently, evidently having come to a similar conclusion. “The law!” He grabbed Jefferson’s arm and practically swung him away from the window and gave him a push towards the door. “Go. Upstairs… warn the others.”

“What about you?” Jefferson asked as Jones turned back to peer into the darkness of the garden.

Jones shook his head. “I’ll go downstairs. We’ll be ready for them,” he said. “What are you waiting for? Go!”

Jefferson made it look as though he was rushing to follow the man’s instructions, once outside the door he slipped to his right, the opposite side from the stairs, and flattened himself against the wall to wait for Jones to come out. He looked around quickly to make sure there was no one else on the landing, relieved to still be alone on the second floor, and he wondered what the hell was keeping everyone either downstairs or up on the top floor, though not for long as he heard Jones’ heavy tread approaching the door.

Like comedy, timing was everything. If he moved too soon, he would alert Jones to his presence. Too late and the man would be out of reach. He hated moments like that; held his breath and pulled the gun he carried out of its holster and waited. One… Two…

Things rarely went according to plan. Jones must have sensed him, because just as he would have moved, stepped behind the man and coshed him over the head with the grip of his gun, Jones turned his head.

“Jared, what the—”

Jefferson tried anyway, lunging for the other man, only to meet Jones’ up-raised forearm and with an audible crunch, instead of the back of is head, and almost as if on instinct, Jones turned and swung the sharp hook he had in place of his missing hand toward Jefferson’s head.

Not fast enough thought, and Jefferson ducked under the weapon, at the same time turning to drive the point of Jones’ hook into the wooden door frame as he pushed the mans wrist against the wood. He tried to follow quickly, to bring his gun up again and wrap Jones into unconsciousness as he’d intended before while he was still stuck with his back to him, but Jones anticipated him again, and used the fact of his hook being trapped to twist his wrist, and pull his arm free of the latch that held the hook in place.

Jefferson ran at the man, wrapped his arms around Jones’ waist and drove his shoulder into the soft spot above his hip, attempting to hook the weight-bearing leg with one of his own, but Jones read him again, and let himself fall backward, heaving with both arms and legs, until Jefferson felt himself flying through the air, mercifully _along_ the landing. He landed heavily, and his gun went skittering along the polished wooden floor.

He didn’t have time to worry about it; didn’t want Jones to get a chance to to reattach his hook, or worse, pull his own gun, which was precisely what Jones was attempting to do as he clambered to his feet, turning toward him gun in hand, so before Jones could aim the weapon, he kicked out blindly, by luck connecting with the man’s shoulder before he could fully straighten up. He knocked him off balance again to slip back down to the floor on hands and feet and the insecurely held weapon went flying. Jefferson didn’t wait to see any other effects of his timely intervention, he just pulled himself to his feet at the same time as Jones, Still winded from the heavy landing and fighting for a decent breath was scrabbling at the floor in an attempt to get to his feet.

Jones was _really_ pissing him off, and was still getting up again, and Jefferson scrambled over, uttering a breathless, “Let me give you a hand there… _mate_ ,” mocking an expression of which Jones was overly fond, and speared his fingers into the man’s hair at the crown of his head, and twisting, tugging him upward, while at the same time grabbing a hold of his sleeve. Then before Jones could properly realize his intent, or fully regain his balance, Jefferson launched him toward the banister rail, without letting go, bringing Jones’ head down hard against the solid oak wood at the top, not once, but twice, before tossing him backwards, to land in a crumpled heap beside the wall.

It hadn’t been the quiet disposal he’d intended, and he was certain their scramble would have attracted some attention. He didn’t wait to find out, simply moved as fast as he could, while still trying to catch his breath, toward the staircase leading to the upper floor.

He took the stairs two at a time, and half way up, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He snatched it out, and glanced at the screen, suddenly bursting into entirely humorless, and slightly hysterical laughter. The notification read: “ _We are Breaching NOW!_ ”


	6. Payment Due

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am including a trigger warning with this chapter, both for violence and attempted sexual assault.

Belle sat trembling in the seat in front of the computer, filled with a nest of writhing vipers that were her emotions. _How could he have_ done _this!_ Her own father, the man that was supposed to love and protect her through her whole life, selling her off like some commodity in order to secure his own position of wealth and political power. Anger, pain, disbelief, contempt were names among those vipers, but most of all _fear_ ; fear and hate for the woman on the other end of the video link.

“So you see, dearie,” the woman said calmly after setting down the contract she had read to Belle in its entirety before showing her what was clearly her father’s signature. “The deal was struck years ago, and you’ve enjoyed a good deal of comfort thanks to our efforts on your family’s behalf.”

“No!” Belle snapped, “I won’t _do_ it. I never consented to this!”

Behind her, the tall man that had dragged her upstairs chuckled, and remarked to his short and pudgy comrade, under his breath, but meant for her to hear, “Much more fun when they fight.”

“Hardly matters,” the woman said, “Consent was given for you. Everything comes with a price, and now is the time of reckoning. I only met with you out of courtesy, and you’d do well not to—”

A flash like lightning lit up the room from the outside at the same moment that the screen froze for a second and then reanimated, and Belle saw the scowl appear on the woman’s face at the other end of the video link.

“West!?” she snapped, and Belle felt herself pulled out of the chair, thrust aside, as the red headed woman took her place. She tuned out their hurried, urgent conversation, a moment of clarity giving her back some of the strength, the fight, that had been bullied out of her. She swiveled her head, looking for a way out, but her eyes met those of her mother who was still kneeling in the corner where they had evidently put her. Her hands were tied behind her back. The look her mother gave her held words.

_Yes, Belle, go. Use this moment. Save yourself._

Belle shook her head no, but her mother breathed, “Yes,” even as she started to get her feet beneath her. Belle knew in that instant that her mother was going to act anyway. If she didn’t follow her mother’s lead, it would all be for nothing. Almost holding her breath she began to inch toward the door.

With a sudden growl, as she achieved her feet, her mother launched herself, head down and at as fast a run as she could muster, toward the tall bully and his obsequious companion. No shrinking violet, Belle knew, Collette aimed her shoulder and head to do as much harm as possible; to give _her_ as much chance of escape as possible. Belle charged for the door, not looking back. If she looked back, she knew, she would falter, make her mother’s efforts all be in vain.

“Bitch!” Belle heard the man’s grunt of pain, even as she got to the door, reaching out for the handle. “She bit me!”

A cacophony of sound became confusion as Belle wrenched open the door to the room, and took the first tentative step beyond. Behind her, the sound of a struggle, and the redhead’s call for them to stop her. Ahead, from elsewhere in the house the tremendous explosions of sound and lights - the rattle of what could only be gunfire, the shouts of warning, everything all becoming one ball of sound.

When it came, the single deafening discharge of a weapon behind her made her jump, scream, and take off at as much of a run as she could, even if she didn’t know where to run, denial of what she knew fueling her frantic steps. The sound of stomping, running feet following her barely reached through her blind panic until the moment when she was jerked to a stop, pain in her head the proof that she had been caught by the hair, a large hand twisted it, and used it to begin hauling her around. Giving another cry, this time one of pain, she reached up and behind her, to dig her fingernails into the wrist attached to the large hand.

“Only place you’re going,” the voice snarled, “is with me. You belong to _me_ now, and I’ve waited long enough!”

She fought, becoming wild, like a cornered animal as he half dragged, half carried her towards an open door off the landing. She snarled at him, high pitched and fearfully furious, the capacity to form words momentarily forgotten.

He tossed her through the doorway and, off balance, she fell, landing hard. She hit her head on the hardwood floor and for a moment the brightness of stars floated before her vision, then she turned and scrambled backwards as she saw him coming toward her again, already beginning to unbuckle his belt with one hand, brandishing a knife with the other. Her eyes went wide, and a buzzing, sideways dizziness overtook her, as though the world were turning strangely on its axis.

“No,” she said in denial, her voice only a whisper even though, to her, it felt like a shout, but he just laughed, stalking toward her, and then around the room with her, like a cat after a mouse when she pushed herself to her feet, her head still aching from where it hit the floor.

Gunfire nearby distracted her, and her attacker lunged, grabbing her by the front of her blouse, and pulling her close, the other hand fisting in her hair again to pull her head back painfully, as he leaned down into her face, to growl against her mouth, “Your father contracted you to me, terms of the ‘loan’ are up, and payment is—”

His breath was sour, his mouth, as it brushed hers when he spoke felt like slime and filth against her soft skin, she had to get him away, she just _had_ to. It was almost automatic, her reaction, as though she’d read it somewhere and the thought had lodged in her mind, an unconscious protection for when she might need it - like now. She stopped fighting, endured the bruising possession of her mouth by his for one… two… three heartbeats until she couldn’t stand it any more and then with as much force as she could muster, brought her knee up, hard, into his groin.

He roared, a sound of pain and anger, but let her go, and she dodged around him, meaning to run for the door - still open as he had been in such a hurry to take from her that which she was not willing to give. In pain or not, it seemed that he still possessed some presence of mind, and lashed out with the hand that held the knife.

White heat burst against the top of her right shoulder, tearing downward, diagonally across the top of her chest, the instrument of its creation tangling in the wire at the center of her bra. In a panicked desperation she pushed at the blade with her left hand, ignoring the added pain as the knife sliced deeply into her hand, tearing at her fingers. The sacrifice afforded her freedom, and she ran for the door.

She didn’t need to see to know that he was coming after her, didn’t really expect to get far, but wasn’t about to stop trying. She reached the landing before he caught her. He was limping slightly, but he caught her by her flailing wrist and swung her around, right into the back of his hand - more an almost-punch than a slap - that sent her tumbling against the outside wall of the room she’d just escaped.

She was winded, and everything moved in slow motion. He came toward her again, brandishing the knife. Playing with her now, slashing left and right; a warning that she couldn’t escape him, no matter which way she tried to run as she pushed herself up the wall - slashing, stabbing, coming too close and he raised her arms in defense, the tip of the knife once more cutting a gash in her hand and the side of her wrist.

Sobbing, not knowing what else to do, she ran straight _for_ him instead of trying to go around. He wasn’t expecting it and for a moment, her momentum moved him enough that she _could_ dodge aside without the sting of the blade. Then he was on her again, had her pinned to the balcony rail before she could even work out what had happened, and she felt him fumbling at the back of her skirt, pushing it up and grasping her hips even as he ground himself against her.

Bile rose in her throat, instinct took hold and as he bent over her she threw back her head with all of her strength. The crunch was sickening, but he let her go and she tried to slide out from between him and the rail, hearing but barely registering the clatter of the knife as it fell from his hand. She turned to see him clutching his hands to his nose. She pushed at him, and he staggered after her as she sidestepped along the rail, wincing as the bare space in the small of her back, where her blouse had ridden up, scraped against a jagged portion of the rail. Her eyes widened in fear as he staggered backwards, wiping away the blood that was dripping from his nose with the back of his hand, before he lunged at her with a snarling growl.

She side stepped, turning and slapped out at him, pushing even as he hit the balcony railing. There was a horrible, creaking snap as the railing broke under his weight and the force of his drive against it, her push adding to the momentum, and sending him tumbling over the edge with a terrified cry, but her own balance was compromised, and she felt herself begin to teeter in the broken gap in the rail.

Belle screamed, grasping at the remaining banister with hands left slippery with her own blood as she began to fall.


	7. Come With Me

Fighting the tears of hysteria that threatened to start as his laughter ended, Jefferson reached the head of the stairs, trying to calm himself enough to follow his plan; the items he left hidden around the house, carefully, when others were inattentive or sleeping. His contingency.

He ducked into the bathroom where the linen closet hid the vest, spare handgun and a spare clips of\ ammunition. He slipped the vest on quickly, barely taking the time to fasten it. He had to find Missus French and her daughter, and fast. His every instinct was telling him that something was wrong - the way this had all gone down. Sure he’d been pissed at Rab for not fighting for him; not trying to delay the takedown, but his handler had _never_ let him down after a promise of a heads up. Except now he had.

As the flash lit up the whole of the house, he started counting under his breath, keeping time with what he knew was standard procedure. This wasn’t standard. The explosive pounding of the ram followed too quickly after the percussive flash.

“Fuck!” he hissed. It was definitely wrong, and he knew - without a doubt - that he was on his own; that he couldn’t risk identifying himself to the incoming amalgam of law enforcers. No one would know him.

“Fuck!” he spat more vehemently, then was drawn from the near paralysis of wondering how the hell he was going to do this and get them both out safely by the sound of nearby gunfire, A single shot propelled him into action, and he made his way down the hallway, kicking in the first door he came on. Truly acting on instinct he raised his weapon and shot the room’s single occupant before the man could turn his own gun on him.

A quick glance told him that the women weren’t there and he hurried out of the room, along to the next - empty, though from the cloud of cigarette smoke in one corner, it hadn’t been for long. Gunfire sounded from below, and he guessed that everyone had headed down - good little soldiers for the cause - to stop the invasion of the feds, to give West and her top tier cronies the chance to get out. This was what he’d warned Rab about. This was what threatened to make the last ten years of his life a complete and total waste of time. The losses, and the sacrifice he’d made, all for nothing.

Another room, and another dead end. The women weren’t there either. What if West had them, had taken them with her as she escaped, was bringing them to Duneach where they’d suffer worse than anything they could have endured where they were? What if his need to equip himself meant he’d gone the wrong way at the head of the stairs?

Left only with the room at his end of the hall, Jefferson threw himself against the heavy wood, slamming it back against its hinges as he took in the room. The computer, open wall panel leading down to a stairway, the body of a woman on the floor.

“Oh, God damned motherfuck--!” he growled, his voice caught as he felt his eyes heating again. It didn’t take the spreading stain of blood around her to know that there was no way she was going to make it, even if he _could_ get her help. He knelt beside her, reaching for her neck. She had a pulse, but it was weak, thready and already faltering. He went to pull his hand away, and started as the woman’s weak grasp latched on to his wrist and her eyes flickered open.

“I knew you weren’t…” she rasped, fighting for breath. “Somehow I… knew.”

“Collette,” he breathed, “I’m sorry, I can’t—”

She released his wrist and reached up to lay her fingertips against his lips, to stop him speaking as she took another labored breath. “Not… your…” she said weakly. Another breath and then, “Belle… she ran… but…”

“Sshh,” he said softly, “Don’t talk. Just…” He swallowed.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I know. Did this… for Belle… get away.” Jefferson closed his eyes for a moment, his jaw tightening as the sense of failure washed over him. His eyes came open as Collette spoke again, “Help… her.” 

He gave her a tight half smile.

“I promise,” he answered, not even knowing if he could keep that promise, but it was little enough that he could do. He’d try. Collette smiled up at him.

“Go,” she whispered, and closed her eyes. “Don’t wait… with me. Go.”

She gave him an ineffectual push, and he sat back on his heels for a moment, in spite of her words watching her breathing slow. Hitch. Stop.

With a half cry of impotence, rage smoldering inside of him _…ten years. Ten fucking impossible years…_ he pushed to his feet, advancing with as much caution as his anger would allow toward the door. As he stepped through, his blood froze.

If it weren’t so serious, it would have been comical, like something out of a badly made martial arts movie. The tiny dot of a woman against the huge lummox of a man, attempting to hold her own, even after the back handed slap to the side of her face threw her against the wall of the landing. She didn’t stay down for long, pushing herself up, using the wall for leverage and dodging first left, then right in an attempt to get round him.

To Jefferson’s dismay, they were all the way at the other end of the landing.

He couldn’t risk a shot for the way they were dodging back and forth, couldn’t risk hitting the woman - hitting Belle. He was going to save her; was going to get her out of there, and take her somewhere safe until he could figure out what the fuck was going on.

Trying to keep his head, to keep his wits about him, he started to make his way along the landing. It wouldn’t do her any good if he got his cover blown, or got hurt, or worse, busted before he could reach her, so he couldn’t just charge in like a one-man Light Brigade. Even so he winced as he saw the knife that Gaston wielded - and he recognized that bull of a man - slash across Belle’s arm, blood flying across the hallway in droplets from the gash left in its wake.

“Hey!” Jefferson called out, raising his weapon again, and trying to sight the man even as he moved along toward where they were still struggling, to where Belle suddenly ran straight _for_ Gaston. It might have worked too, bought her some measure of freedom, but for the reach of the ape’s arms, and he grabbed her as she dodged, and pinned her face down against the rail, seemed to be fumbling between the two of them. _Surely not…!_ He tried again, calling out, “Let her go,” but still wasn’t heard, probably because of the blood pounding through Gaston’s ears as it rushed south.

Jefferson felt caught in one of those nightmares, the ones where you find yourself running down a hallway that starts to stretch and elongate; that no matter how far you run, how fast, still you never reach the door at the end. He tried to reach Belle in time to save her from Gaston’s attentions, still not daring to take a shot. As wound up as he was in that moment, the way he could feel his own hands shaking around the grip of the handgun.

What happened next was almost too fast for him to truly comprehend what actually occurred. He watched as Belle thew back her head, clearly making contact with Gaston’s nose judging by the sudden rush of blood down over the man’s face as he roared and staggered backwards, and then he was lunging at her again, a little further along the rail, where she’d turned and tried to side-step to freedom, towards Jefferson, and he started to reach out, meaning to catch her outstretched arm and pull her behind him; to safety - take Gaston out with a well placed shot.

In reality, what happened drew a cry of horror from him that echoed Belle’s own scream as the railing broke beneath Gaston’s weight, and Belle fought to keep a hold of the broken end of the rail, her other arm flailing for balance, or opposite momentum or… something - anything to keep herself from falling.

Jefferson sprinted the rest of way, senses on overdrive, adrenaline pushing away everything but sheer concentration. Four armed bodies on the stairs. Three more yards to get within reach of Belle. Barely ten steps beyond Belle to a solidly made dresser against the wall. Another six yards to the nearest door…

Belle’s arm came in an upswing as she started to lose her fight to keep herself from falling, he caught her wrist and pulled, reversing her motion just enough to be able to duck under her wheeling arm and wrap his own arm around her waist, not to hold her, but to throw her toward the dresser. The first of the shots rang out from the gunmen at the head of the stairs, no time to take in appearance - to see whether ‘friend’ or foe, Jefferson risked pushing off from the broken end of the railing to turn himself, took two wild shots to encourage the men to keep their heads down; to keep them from returning fire, before he threw himself at Belle, letting his wiry bulk push her around the corner of the dresser to shelter her against the wall. He pressed against her, intending to shelter her with the vest as much as he could until a lull in the gunfire told him the men were moving.

He straightened up then, enough to turn at least, lean around the dresser to snap off another couple of shots, even as his other hand tugged at the loosely fastened closures on the vest, shrugging off the garment. Even knowing she would drown in it, he snapped over his shoulder, “Put this on,” as he let it fall against her. He had to give her time to do that. Had to trust himself, his aim. “Be ready to run,” he told her, a slightly insane twinkle in his eye as he stepped out from beside the dresser, fired one shot, and then another. Two more…

“What’s it gonna be, fellas?” he asked, the two men that were still standing and still armed, but staring at him with incredulity. He would have been the same - hell, he was. Amazed at the size of his own balls at simply stepping out against what had been four armed men in order to buy time for his… what was she to him?

That they didn’t immediately warn him who they were should have been a comfort to him. The right response to his question, if they’d been the law, should have been to identify themselves and warn him to surrender or risk being shot at, but he’d long since established that this was no ordinary takedown, so instead he shrugged slightly and glanced over his upraised arm at Belle.

“Ready, Spitfire?” he asked, and she both quirked an eyebrow, and swallowed in obvious fear both at the same time, but he could also see that she was getting paler; that the stain spreading on her shirt was getting bigger far faster than he would have liked. Did she get hit? He saw her nod her readiness, get her feet under herself, then turned his attention back to the two remaining gunmen who had begun a cautious approach. He shifted his aim, and drilled a hole in the boards at their feet, stopping them in their tracks, and gave them a killer, if sarcastic smile.

“Sorry guys,” he said with a shrug. “Gotta run.” Then before they had time to react, he grasped Belle’s elbow, and took off at a run, dragging her along beside him to the nearest door, almost taking it off its hinges as he threw it open, took in the room’s vacant state, and pushed her through. Then he slammed the door shut and began to pull the heaviest piece of furniture that he could find across the door entrance.

When he was done, he turned to Belle, who had almost literally folded to the ground, her legs in a heap beneath her. He swore softly, and went over to the window, the one he knew had a faux patio about four to six feet beneath it. The ‘contingency plan’ he hadn’t wanted to take, and looked out. So far the back looked clear, if only they could reach the ground.

“You…” Belle’s voice was trembling as she spoke, “You’re… Jared… aren’t you?”

He looked at her for a long moment, contemplating just what he should tell her, and what he shouldn’t, at this point in the game. After another minute more, he shook his head, then unlocked and pushed open the window before turning back to her.

“Come with me,” he said, and moved over to her, holding out his hand and when she took it, pulled her as gently as he could to her feet, sliding his arm beneath hers to support her.

“Who are you?” she asked, leaning against him heavily. “Why are you doing this?”

“My name is Jefferson,” he told her, beginning to draw her toward the window. “And right now, we need to concentrate on getting you out of here.”


	8. Are You Insane!

“You’re… Jared… aren’t you?” Belle asked and hated the way her voice trembled. For long seconds, which stretched into seemingly endless minutes, he just looked at her and she thought he was going to refuse to answer her; would just leave her there in a heap on the floor? What did he want from her anyway? Where was Mother?”

The man, Jared or whatever he was called, shook his head and then she watched in a mix of fear and confusion as his long legs carried him over to the window, and pushed it open before sticking his head out, and from the movement of his body, she guessed he must have looked around. Then, he drew his head back inside and turned to her and began to move her way again and held out his hand.

“Come with me.”

Something in the way he looked at her, in the steady way his hand waited in the air between them, made her reach up, cautiously, like a deer ready to run. So far she had no reason to think he meant her harm. Hadn’t he saved her from falling - from others that would have come after them?

Her hand settled in his and she felt the warmth of his fingers close carefully over her own, gently, as if he were mindful of her injuries - and she tried not to think too hard about how she’d gotten them - and drew her to his feet, before sliding his arm around her, keeping him stooped as he tried to support her.

“Who are you?” she asked, and then more pressing as she leaned more heavily against him. “Why are you doing this?”

“My name is Jefferson,” he told her, his voice as steady as the hold he had on her, and she heard compassion in the undertones of it as he began to move the both of them toward the now open window, adding, “and I need your help to get you out of here.”

He leaned her carefully against the wall beside the open window, before climbing into it, and sitting astride both the indoor and outdoor sill. She watched as he took a moment to slip off his waistcoat, and shirt, before pulling on his waistcoat again over the T-shirt he wore beneath. She saw him wind his shirt into a rope of sorts. Then she half-slid,, half fell around the edge of the wall where it met the window so that she could see out.

Her eyes filled with tears in an instant. They were three storeys up. There was no _way_ they would make it to the ground.

As if he knew what she was thinking, Jefferson said, “It’s not as far as it looks. There’s a false terrace about six feet below us. I’ll lower you down. We’ll go from there.”

“No,” she argued, lifting her still bloodied hands, “You won’t hold me, I—”

He cut her off by lifting the now twisted shirt as if for her approval. “We’ll slip this under your arms and I’ll lower you. You’re what? Five feet?” She nodded and shrugged, both at the same time. “Then it’ll just be a one foot drop. You can handle that, right?”

“I… guess,” she said slowly. “But what… you?”

“Once you’re down, I’ll follow. Don’t worry about me. I’m good,” he said, and though he was obviously trying to sound confident, she couldn’t help but catch the slight waver in his voice.

The discussion was interrupted by a hammering coming from the door, and he glanced behind them, obviously checking to see that they were still safe. He must have decided they weren’t because he reached for her elbow with one hand, and patted the window sill with the other.

“Time’s up,” he said. “Sit up here.” She gave him an almost terrified look. “I won’t let you fall. I promise.”

Another, louder cracking sound against the door spurred her to action, and with Jefferson’s help, she managed to climb up to sit on the window ledge, with her legs dangling down outside, and at his urging, lifted her arms so that he could slip the twisted shirt beneath her arms, making a kind of poor man’s harness of it.

“Jefferson, I ca—” she started, panic setting in as she looked down. The ground was so far away.

“You _can_ ,” he told her, his voice urgent and uncompromising. “Trust me.”

She stared at him for the longest time. Taking in the worry lines crinkling his otherwise smooth face; the intensity of the promise to keep her safe clear in the blue of his eyes, muted by the dim light from the room.

“What do I do?” she said at last.

“Just let yourself slip off the ledge… and try to relax. I’ll do the rest,” he told her.

Feeling as though she were taking her life in her hands, or rather, putting it into _his_ , Belle shuffled forward until all that supported her were her elbows, still hooked on the ledge, and the makeshift rope of Jefferson’s shirt, and then even the ledge was gone as Jefferson began to lower her, carefully, toward the terrace below, turning her part way so that she was facing the wall, able to brush her toes against the rough stone of the outside of the house, feeling a little more secure, until, almost abruptly, she came to a halt, swinging a little from side to side. Acting on instinct, she braced herself against the wall, then looked down.

The stone of the terrace looked no more than two feet below her… surely she could drop safely over such a short distance. She looked up again, watching as Jefferson glanced over his shoulder, and took a deep breath before wriggling to try and slip lower in the shirt, reducing the drop. She managed to slip down to her elbows, before she dared take her courage in both hands.

“All right,” she called up quietly, and she saw him nod, his eyes fixed intently on hers before he leaned down as much as he could and let go of the ends of his twisted shirt.

Even though she knew there was a ledge a ledge beneath her Belle’s stomach lurched, and lodged somewhere in her chest. She closed her eyes, which was probably not the best thing she could have done and met the hard stone of the ledge with a bump, and then toppled to the side, hitting her shoulder as she fell and knocking the wind out of herself.

As she lay fighting to get air back into her lungs, she watched, almost horrified, as Jefferson swung his other leg out of the window, and pushed off to let his arms, the grip of his hands, take his weight, lowering himself at full stretch toward the terrace on which she lay.

With his height, it wasn’t much of a drop at all, even so when he landed he let the impact send him into a crouch and steadied himself on an outstretched hand, before he looked over at her with an almost too wide grin and said, “So far so good.”

“Yes, but now what?” she asked, gesturing off the edge of the terrace where she could see little beyond. “It’s still at least two storeys down to the ground, so unless you have a ladder in your back pocket…”

He huffed a little chuckle at that, then told her, “No.. but the next best thing.”

He stood up and offered her his hand again, and once more helped her to her feet, being careful of the cuts that were now beginning to throb mercilessly, then he led her along the terrace and towards the end furthest from where they had jumped.

“Take a look,” he told her as they arrived, and intrigued she knelt down and peered over the darkened edge. Right down at the extent of her vision, lit from beneath she could just make out the gently bowed shape of a canvas awning of some kind.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed, her quick mind catching on to his plan at once. “You have got to be--” she broke off to take in a gasping breath, before beginning again. “Are you _insane?_ ”

“Some say,” he agreed with another, overly wide grin her way. “Personally, I prefer--”

Whatever else he may have been about to say was cut off as shots began to ring out from the window from which they’d escaped, chipping the stone beside them and sending fragments dangerously into the air. Even though _she_ was the one wearing body armor, Jefferson immediately wrapped himself around her, risking injury as more shots rang out, shattering the concrete closer still, and with the momentum of his movement, all but threw them both off the terrace.

Somehow turning in his arms as they fell, Belle screamed against Jefferson’s shoulder, the sound stolen away a moment later when the two of them hit the canvass of the awning and rebounded just a little; enough to knock the wind out of Belle for the second time that evening. She almost bounced off the edge until Jefferson caught the back of the vest by the straps, and hauled her against him again, breathing hard.

“That was wild,” he gasped as he tried to catch his breath.

Belle whimpered, reminded by the scuff of footsteps overhead that they were not yet out of danger, and as if to make the realization even more urgent, more shots rang out from above, though they were random and fired out into the dark.

“Come on,” he hissed and started pushing her towards the corner nearest to the most shadowed part of the building.

As soon as they reached the corner, he swung himself over the edge, and disappeared from Belle’s view, but she heard the sound of feet hitting pavement below and dared herself to peek over the edge. As she did, she saw him turn from looking out across the darkened grounds to look back up at her.

“Lower yourself down. Wrap your arms and legs around the supporting post and slide down to me,” he hissed up at her. “Don’t worry, I’ll catch you.”

“I… I can’t,” she balked at the idea, but saw him shake his head.

“You _have_ to. You’ve done the hardest part. This bit is _easy_." Wordlessly, she shook her head, but saw his lips purse into a flat line before he said, “All you have to do is slip over the edge and find the post with your legs first, then your arms once you have lowered yourself. You can _do_ this.”

She swallowed, hard, catching a flicker from the corner of her eye as a light turned on somewhere inside the house. She knew there was little choice if they were truly going to escape. She had to be brave.


	9. On Whose Side?

Even with his feet firmly on the ground, Jefferson felt less than confident. They still had a long way to go, and a light flickering on inside the house made his appeal to Belle all the more urgent. He supposed he should thank their good luck that at least the grounds at the rear of the house appeared empty, though he was under no illusion that appearances could be more than deceptive. However, ensured of their safety, at least for a few moments more, he turned his attention back to the diminutive young woman he was trying to save.

“Lower yourself down,” he instructed, his voice barely above an urgent hiss. “Wrap your arms and legs around the supporting post and slide down to me.” He saw the fear in her even before she spoke and added, “Don’t worry, I’ll catch you.”

“I… I can’t,” she stammered, but he shook his head, becoming aware that he’d been counting in his head, anticipating the moment when whomever it was had turned on the light inside the house would reach them.

“You _have_ to. You’ve done the hardest part. This bit is _easy_.”

She shook her head again, and he pressed his lips into a flat line, controlling his increasing worry, and as encouragingly as he could, coaxed,, “All you have to do is slip over the edge and find the post with your legs first, then your arms once you have lowered yourself. You can _do_ this.”

He saw the moment that she grabbed her resolve, and moved to position himself by the post where he would be best able to fulfill his promise to catch her, mindful, of course, of her injured hands.

“That’s it,” he crooned as she began to hang off the side of the awning by her elbows. “Just a little further.”

With almost a whimper, she practically dropped onto the pole, and he moved to catch her, thinking she would miss and fall, but somehow she managed to slam into the support and wrap her arms and legs around it so tightly that she didn’t move at all lower from the spot to which she had propelled herself.

“Ease up,” he murmured to her, not quite able to reach. “Let yourself slide lower. I’ve got you, I promise.”

Lips still pursed, he watched as, inch by inch, she slipped closer to the ground; closer to his reach. As soon as he was able he put a hand to her back, as much to assure her of his presence as anything else, and after only a few more, agonizingly slow, downward inches, she twisted her body as she let go with her arms, launching herself at him.

Anyone with lesser reflexes would have been toppled by the way she suddenly slammed into his chest, her arms wrapping tightly around his neck and shoulders, but some part of Jefferson had half expected such a thing. He sensed she was nearing the edge of what she could take in one night, and they _still_ had to get out of the compound. He wrapped his arms around her back and for a moment held her tightly, reassuring, “You did good… great.”

Then, he lowered her to the ground and gently prized her grasp from him, though he kept contact with her.

She surprised him, asking in a shaky voice, “What now?”

“Now we get the hell out of here,” he told her, shooting her as boyish of a grin as he could muster under the circumstances. Then he pointed to the trees that lined the open expanse of the grounds. “We cross to the shadows of those trees, and follow to the wall. Stay low, and stay by me.”

She nodded and moved slightly closer as he hooked one arm through hers, and he saw her cringe as he pulled the gun from where he’d holstered it.

“Just in case,” he pledged, hoping he wasn’t making an empty promise. “Ready?”

As she nodded, he let go of her arm and slipped his own across her back to guide her as they crossed the back lawn. He tried to shorten his strides and still maintain a good speed, especially when they crossed the less shadowed patch of grass where light from the upstairs windows spilled out into the night. They reached the shelter of the trees without incident, and though he breathed a sigh of relief, he knew they had to keep moving. It wouldn’t take long for the two men who had been shooting at them to find their way down - unless of course they’d run into trouble on the way. The thought should have brought him some measure of comfort, but with the way everything had gone down since he learned of the takedown, he had little faith in gaining help from the authorities.

He led Belle deeper into the darkness beneath the trees, heading for where he knew the house was surrounded by high walls, but where he also knew there was an electronic gate for which - as a member of this ‘criminal elite’ - he had a key.

“Let’s hope they haven’t cut the power,” he muttered under his breath.

Belle turned to frown at him. “To what?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It’s all right,” he said. “Not far to go now.”

He could tell she was tiring fast, and after everything she’d been through that evening he was surprised that she wasn’t an utter wreck. He thought she was probably running on adrenaline, and that once she came down from that, _then_ there would be problems. He had to get her somewhere safe, and fast.

The thought made him look down at his phone as he pulled it from his pocket and flicked to the secure email account. _Damn it, Gold!_ he thought vehemently as his message went unanswered. _Fine then_ , he answered himself. _We’ll just have to do this the hard way._

* * *

Jefferson’s luck held as far as the gate was concerned, but not so much with what lay beyond. He heard the voices even as he pressed the fob against the gate sensor and winced as the whir and click seemed inordinately loud in the surrounding hush. He tugged the gate free, and wedged a nearby stone between the gate and the post to keep it from closing fully as he turned to Belle and tucked her into the dip made between the brick gatepost and the wall.

“Stay here,” he told her urgently. “Stay quiet… I’m not sure which side those guys out there are on, so…” he frowned to himself as he tugged a second gun out of a pocket and pulled back the slide. He had no clue whether Belle had even handled a weapon before, or whether she’d be able to use it with her hands in their current state, but he wasn’t about to leave her defenseless while he dealt with whatever awaited them outside. “...if anyone other than me comes through that gate… don’t wait, just squeeze the trigger.”

He handed the gun down to her, flicking off the safety as he did, and watched as she looked at it with near revulsion, but she nodded, and cradled it between her trembling hands.

“I’ll be back,” he told her softly, and nodding added, “You’re doing great, Belle.” Then, without another word, he turned, pulled open the gate and slipped through.

The narrow street beyond was poorly lit, but he wasn’t about to let that lull him into a false sense of security, though it did offer him a measure of protection as he took in the scene. There were two men, both wearing vests that identified them as FBI, which was promising, but didn’t actually mean anything worth Jack as far as he was concerned. The FBI were supposed to have had his back; supposed to have given him a thirty minute heads up on the takedown, and it hadn’t happened, so he could only assume that there were two separate factions within the Bureau.

The question was, on whose side were these two agents?

Moving carefully so that he stayed in the shadows, and could circle the car, parked barely six strides away, to approach the men as if he’d come around from another direction entirely, Jefferson took a deep breath and then straightening up, put a jaunty spring in his step as he moved to deliberately catch their attention, keeping the hood of the car between himself and the others.

It wasn’t long before one of them spotted him, and flashed - far too quickly to be seen in the darkness - an open wallet in his direction.

“Move on,” he instructed, gesturing behind him with a thumb to indicate further along the street. “This is none of your concern.”

“You know what the issue is with this world?” Jefferson said, as though answering the agent’s instruction, though the words were the first half of an identification protocol that he and Rab had agreed upon.

“Are you deaf?” the agent answered, “I said move on!”

Jefferson sighed, then muttered under his breath, “Well then, I guess that answers _that_ question.” Then more clearly and with another sigh. “Sorry, fellas… no can d—”

Before he could even finish his insincere apology, one of the two agents rushed at him across the front of the car, but Jefferson was ready for him, and caught his arm as he got close, using the man’s forward momentum to launch him toward a garage wall on the opposite side of the street. He heard the rush of air burst from the man’s lungs as he hit hard, but Jefferson didn’t wait to see if he were winded enough to stay put. Instead, with a half roll, half slide, he propelled himself across the hood of the car toward the man’s partner, lashing out with a foot as the second agent’s arm began to rise, no doubt holding a weapon.

The kick brought a hiss of pain from the man, and the satisfying clatter of a weapon landing some way in the distance. He didn’t wait, however, for his adversary to recover, but slid off the hood of the Taurus, getting his feet under him to rush the man before he could fully recover.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other agent gather himself and begin moving away from the wall to head in his direction, even as he ducked a wild swing from the man in front of him. He saw a dark shape in the hands of the first of his assailants, a weapon… a gun? Swearing softly at the necessity of using his nearby opponent as protection, and counting on the man’s vest or his partners fast reflexes, to save the agent from lasting harm, Jefferson grabbed at the mans arm as he took another wild swing, catching it by the wrist, twisting it around behind, as he moved to use the man as a shield.

He heard the too familiar crack of the leads as they were propelled from the tazer, and managed to push the man away from himself and into the trajectory of the leads. He winced as the agent jerked like a man with Saint Vitus’ dance before he toppled to the ground.

“Oops,” he offered, with an almost apologetic shrug before rushing the agent that had just disabled his partner by accident.

The fight was brief; fast and dirty, he didn’t have time for finesse. The downed agent wouldn’t stay down for long and he had to take them both out. He drove his shoulder into the man’s partner, into his stomach and used the force of his rush to carry him back against the wall again, knocking the wind from the agent before straightening up to press his forearm across the the man’s throat and hold him in place as his struggles weakened. At first Jefferson had to endure a few painful but ineffectual punches, and even to twist aside against a knee raised toward his groin, but as consciousness began to elude the man he held in place the attempts grew less frequent, until the agent finally became a heavy weight as he slumped against Jefferson.

“See…” he said as he pulled both men to sit at the base of the wall, and after searching the pockets of the unconscious agent for the car keys, found some zip ties which he fastened around their wrists even though he hated those thing. “…that issue I was talking about…?” he went on, answering his own question. “Everyone wants an easy solution to their problems, and everyone refuses to make things easy.” The men groaned almost simultaneously beginning to wake. “Tell that to Rab when you next see him, and tell him also that this is where I disappear.”


	10. Mutual Ambiguity

For Belle, sitting in the Lee of the wall where Jefferson, if that was truly his name, had told her to wait, time passed with all the speed of a snail, and every sound made her more and more tense. She could hear the altercation from outside of the gate, and told herself she didn’t want to know what was going on, but there were just as many sounds coming from her side of the gate, and they were sounds that made her jump at every turn. Each gust of wind that stirred the leaves of the trees sounded like a hand pushing aside vegetation to reach her; every rustle of an animal in the undergrowth was a footstep coming nearer.

As painful as it was, her hands still held tightly to the gun, still trembled around the grip,so much that she almost daren’t rest her finger against the trigger for fear of setting it off by accident.

She heard the sounds from outside of the gate and didn’t really want to imagine what they were, beyond the murmur of voices, the sudden crack and following thud; the sounds of a scuffle then nothing for a long held breath. The silence became a sussurating hiss, and then footsteps, and Belle held her breath so much that her chest hurt with the effort of it. If she didn’t breathe, she wouldn’t be heard, and then the gate opened, and all the breath burst from her with almost a popping sound as she could make out Jefferson slipping through the gate.

“Jefferson…” she managed.

“We’re good. It’s all good,” he said. “I’m fine, but we gotta go. We gotta go _now_.”

As he spoke he reached out to carefully close his large hand over the top of the gun and lift it from her hands. She heard a soft click from the weapon before he slipped it into his pocket and then reached out his hand again, this time to grasp her elbow and help her to her feet.

Without another word he ushered her through the gate and out into the street, and then she caught sight of the two FBI agents that were sitting, slumped against each other with their hands behind their backs. She took in a gasping breath and tried to pull away from Jefferson, but his grasp on her arm was too strong.

“What did you—” she began, but he interrupted her, stopping and turning to face her, grasping her by both arms and leaning down to look her in the eyes.

“Look,” he began urgently, “It was either me or them. I promise you there’s no lasting damage. They’ll both be fine.”

He let go with one hand and ran it through his hair. She couldn’t quite read his expression, it was something between frustration and contrition. It made her want to listen when he spoke again.

“You probably won’t get this, but those two men are _not_ my people,” he said. “So, until I know whose side they’re on, this is the best I can do.” He nodded his head toward the two men to illustrate what he meant. “If I was wrong, I’ll apologize later, but right now. Right. Now. We have to leave. Get as far away from here as we can as quickly as we can. Okay?”

_That_ was something that Belle could definitely get behind. She wanted to be anywhere but there, and for now, even though she still wasn’t sure of Jefferson, of his intent, she would go along with him. Perhaps more would become clearer later, and he certainly hadn’t done her any harm so far.

She nodded, but didn’t speak. Her gaze lingered on the two men on the ground as Jefferson led her across to the car, and helped her to get strapped in on the passenger side of the vehicle.

“You’re… stealing this car, aren’t you?” Belle accused as he slipped into the driver’s side, then watched his face as he contemplated the answer, as though he were trying to formulate an answer.

“That depends,” he said, and she could tell that it was an answer that he’d had to settle on, not necessarily the one he wanted to give.

“Oh?” hanging on to what little scraps of sanity and adrenaline she could muster, she injected a dash of sarcasm just as though she were mixing some kind of exotic cocktail. “Go on. _This_ should be good.”

“Well it all hinges on whether you believe those two men there truly are agents with the FBI. The car is is a Taurus, it’s clearly well maintained, and—”

“What the hell does the make of car have to do with it?” Belle snapped, finding mixology, and her skills at said art were not all they were cracked up to be.

“Well, if this is a Taurus, and they really _are_ with the FBI—”

She cut him off again. He was going around in circles. “Is this. Their car?” she demanded, gesturing out of the window to where the two men were still in a heap on the ground, one of them, she noticed, had a slight scrap of lining peeking out of his pants pocket.

Jefferson looked at the men, and then back at Belle, and then at the men again with the same expression he’d had on his face when she first asked him. He pouted slightly, tipped his head to the side, and then looked down at the key fob in his hand.

“Don’t think it matters at this point,” he told her, pushing the key home into the ignition, shifting the car to reverse, and then half turning with his arm along the back of her seat as he set the car in motion, began driving it backwards at speeds she didn’t think were at all appropriate for the less than roomy width of the street, all but singing as he did, “This is a Taurus, they claim to be Feds, and I need a vehicle, so… No. Not theirs. Mine.”

Clearly it bothered him, though, as he reached the end of the narrow road and swung the car out onto one of Boston’s lesser known side roads he huffed as he shifted the car into drive. Belle left him to his thoughts for a while until they had mingled into the anonymity of the heavier traffic around the center of the town, and then asked, “Where are we going anyway?”

“Somewhere safe,” he said, his eyes ever moving, checking traffic to their left and right, and watching for longer periods of time in the rear-view mirror. “North,” he added at last, turning right, and following a sign that promised Interstate 95.

They drove in silence for many miles, Belle contemplating everything that had happened, feeling her weariness and the pain of her injuries sharper now that she had time to stop and sit in relative safety. She thought about Jefferson too. His actions, his words, his unspoken sense of… she shrugged mentally, unable for the longest time, to find an appropriate word to describe what Jefferson was. He certainly seemed to mean her no harm; claimed to be taking her to safety, and yet he had been there, in the house, with those horrible men and women who did _unspeakable_ things. True, she’d never actually seen him participate in those things, but… by association, surely he was guilty. She supposed it fair to say that she’d had very little to do with him. He had never been assigned to oversee any aspect of her captivity, and she’d only ever seen him in hallways, or in passing - until today. In fact, she thought, he seemed to hold himself back, refuse to truly embrace the moral turpitude the others displayed. The more she thought about that; about the way he’d behaved since their escape, and about his clear discomfort after their earlier conversation, about the car, the more he seemed to her to be… well… ambiguous.

That was the word she had been looking for all along. He was ambiguous. His entire being was ambiguity incarnate, and while being with him now was a whole bucket load better than being a captive, it didn’t necessarily mean that she was any safer with him than she had been before, and as crazy as the thought sounded, as she spotted a sign announcing that a rest stop would soon be coming up, she decided she might be better trying to go it alone.

“There’s a rest stop ahead,” she told him softly, and raised an eyebrow when he glanced over at her. Then shrugged at him. “I couldn’t really use… well… little girls room, you know?”

He glanced at her again, then back at the highway and she watched as little furrows of thought creased his brow, and shifted the expressions on his mobile face, even into his hair. Then, as they sped past the one mile warning, he let out a soft sigh, and said, more gently than she expected, “Fine, but we’ll have to make it a quick stop for now. There’s no guarantee that someone won’t come looking for us, and I’d rather put a few more miles between us and Boston before we start to let our guard down.”

By the time he’d finished his explanation, the off ramp that led into the rest area was immediately on their right, and he pulled onto the roadway, the rumble of the tires a different cadence and inertia tugging her back from the seat as he applied the brakes. A moment or two later they pulled into the parking space out front of the building that housed the facilities.

She tried to unclip the seatbelt and get out of the car before he could do the same, but the stiffening of her injured hands prevented it, and he had opened the passenger door, and was reaching in to help her, then to take her by the elbow and tug her out of the vehicle, keeping a hold of her in what felt as though it was meant to be a supportive manner, and after closing the door behind her, led her into the building, and almost into the ladies’ room itself.

“Um…” she reminded him softly, nodding her head toward the sign beside the opening.

“Right,” he muttered, and then cleared his throat, but sounded uncomfortable still as he said, “Sorry.” He let her go then, and she faltered slightly, before she began to walk into the designated rest room. She hadn’t counted on him being quite so attentive, and cursed herself under her breath, trying to think of a way to get him to be anywhere but hovering outside waiting for her return.

“You… you think this place has any kind of… vending or something?” she asked, turning back to him, where he was waiting, leaning with his arms crossed over his chest, his shoulder against the tiles, feet crossed at the ankles.

“I’m sure it does,” he answered. “Why?”

“Feel like I need something sugary… you know?” she answered, trying not to blush or give anything away as he gave her a long, steady look. Finally he nodded, and it was all she could do not to let out a huge sigh or relief.

“Five minutes,” he told her. “Meet back at the car.”

“Five minutes,” she agreed, and suddenly she felt guilty for the way she intended to betray his trust as soon as he was out of sight.


	11. True Colors

Jefferson wasn’t really one to believe in a ‘sixth sense’ but he _did_ have an uncanny knack of knowing when something really wasn’t quite right. Belle asking him to go and get soda was one of those things that _should_ have been perfectly reasonable, but somehow felt wholly wrong.

While he didn’t want to deny Belle something she said she needed, his suspicion, at last, got the better of him when he was half way between the rest room facilities, and the shelter where the vending machines were housed. He turned back toward the building in time to see a small, dark shape slip around the side of it, and instinctively he cast his gaze toward the grounds behind the building, and the trees that marked the boundary of the rest stop area. Somewhere back there would be an access road, and he knew Belle wasn’t stupid - if it _was_ Belle - and figured she would have worked that out.

Swearing under his breath, mostly at his own gullible nature that had made him empathize with Belle’s needs, and acquiesce to providing for her, he turned and began to take long strides in a direction that would intercept the woman. He hadn’t gone far when she began to pick up her pace. She must have turned and seen him, because after a few more moments she began to run. He sighed, in lieu of another curse under his breath, and took off running after her.

It didn’t take long for him to gain ground, his longer strides bringing him nearer with every step, but it did present him with a bit of a conundrum. He didn’t want to simply launch himself at her and tackle her to the ground, the way he might have done for a criminal fleeing a scene of a crime. Belle wasn’t a criminal. She was the victim of kidnapping by a vicious and immoral organization, one that did terrible things to far too many innocents. At worst, Belle was fleeing his ‘protective custody.’ He also didn’t want to reach out and grab her, mindful of the injuries to her arms and hands… her shoulder too.

In the end, as he drew almost level with her, he did the only thing he could think of to do. He caught her around the waist and simply lifted her from the ground.

“Let me go!” she growled. “You can’t— I… let go of me!”

As she spat some rather colorful invectives at him like an enraged hell cat, she flailed with her arms and legs, landing a few painful kicks to his shins that were probably going to leave bruises. He just held her closer so that she couldn’t do likewise with her fists or elbows in his face. She continued to claw, and spit and fight for freedom.

He missed her hand as it flew up toward his shoulder, his neck, and tangled in the silk scarf he wore and pulled until it came away. The cold air rushed against his neck, and it was a shock to him. He’d worn the scarf, or one like it for so many years he almost couldn’t remember; since he was a young and idealistic agent who thought he knew it all, thought he could save the world until—

“No!” he cried out against the train of thought and Belle both as something in him snapped. He dropped her like a stone, and followed her down, instinctively reaching behind him for cuffs that weren’t there. “Belle stop!” he called out instead, holding her in place as she continued to struggle. “Just stop…!” He didn’t want to, but to control her struggles he had to twist her arm behind her back, his heart squeezing painfully as she cried out; knowing he’d caused her pain. “For the love of God,” he appealed as she kept moving, though with less energy, less desperation, “Just. Stop!”

She did, finally, going limp beneath him and for a moment he still held her in place and then, confident she wouldn’t try to run any more he let go, and with the hand that rested on the ground pushed himself to his feet, snatching up his fallen scarf as he went. He didn’t go far, two… three steps further perhaps before he turned and sat heavily on the ground, pouting down at the torn silk and began to unpick the knot that had held it in place, and tying another to join the place where the silk had ripped. If he were lucky he would still be able to tie it around is neck, back into place, and he glanced up at Belle to see her sitting up and hugging her knees to her chest.

“Who _are_ you?” she asked him, soft but insistent. “What do you _want_ with me?”

“I _told_ you,” he answered, still petulant after their struggle. He wound the scarf into place as he continued. “My name is Jefferson, and I’m _trying_ to keep you safe.”

“Oh, by kidnapping me from the kidnappers?” she shifted from despair to mockery in an instant. “Well doesn’t _that_ sound like a great plan? Next, why not—”

“Have you _any_ idea what those people were going to do to you!” his voice raised over the top hers. “What they intended?”

“Yes,” she snapped back. “That woman made it _perfectly_ clear and there’s no _way_ my father would accept that. He would never allow—”

“Oh, wake up, Belle.” He pushed himself to his feet again, and started toward the car, leaning down to spell it out to her. “Daddy’s not interested in coming to rescue you.”

He continued down the gently sloping grass toward where the car was parked, refusing to turn back even as he heard her scramble to her feet and begin to hurry in his direction; didn’t stop walking until she reached out and caught his arm.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked.

Jefferson put his head back, closed his eyes and let out a long, deep sigh, before straightening up and turning, slowly, to face Belle. He met her eyes, his expression pointed, watching as the frown began to roll over her face like gathering clouds.

“No,” she began, sounding vague, confused, but gathering an overly firm resolve as she continued, “No, you’re wrong. He would never…”

She trailed off, still staring into his eyes, a horrified kind of fear mingled with hope and colored with uncertainty streaming from every pore of her. He held that gaze for a moment longer before he shrugged, and began to turn again.

“Suit yourself,” he said, almost over his shoulder. Then when he didn’t hear her footsteps hurrying to keep up after a few strides, he called, “You coming, or would you rather stay here and take your chances with dear old papa?”

After only a moment he heard her footsteps brushing through the damp grass, and shook his head at himself. He hated that he had been so cruel as to force her into facing the truth, and it was _facing_ it, because he was pretty sure from her reaction that she had already worked it out for herself and was simply in denial.

When they reached the car, he unlocked and opened the passenger door for her. He hadn’t missed the sticky wetness she’d left on his sleeve as she grasped him, and knew he’d opened up the wound on her wrist again when he tackled her to the ground. Once he had clipped the seatbelt into place he opened up the back door, and reached in to where he expected he would find a basic first aid kit, and was not disappointed.

“Let me see your hands,” he said as he unzipped the green bag.

“I’m fine,” she answered, almost tucking her hands out of the way instead of giving them to him.

“The hell you are,” he answered. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you, but being stubborn now isn’t going to help either of us.” He offered her a wan smiled then and added, “I promise I’ll be gentle.”

She sighed, and then slowly held out her hands to him. He tended them in silence, focusing on keeping his promise and making her as comfortable as he could with the supplies they had, and when he had finished, he tossed the first aid kit into the back of the car, and reached into the glove compartment. Reaching in, he felt around for a moment until he found what he hoped he would, under the papers that had been stuffed inside. He made a mental note to look at the papers later, as he figured they might give him more insight into what was going on.

As he closed the glove compartment again, he let the handcuffs dangle from one hand, and raised and eyebrow at Belle. “Not going to make me use these, right?” he asked.

Belle shook her head, then with a sigh added, “I don’t have the energy to try and run away again.”

Jefferson nodded and slipped the handcuffs into his jacket pocket instead. Then he stood up from the crouch that was making his knees ache. “Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, and he thought she sounded almost afraid.

“To get you that soda you asked for,” he answered. “I think you’re going to need it before too long.”


	12. Anything That Can Go Wrong...

They drove in silence, and Jefferson assumed that Belle was lost in her own thoughts as he was in his. Either that, or starting to crash in spite of the soda she drank. He checked his phone again for a message from Gold, but still nothing. He cursed under his breath. The man _owed_ him. He reached up and fingered the silk at his throat. True enough that the debt was mutual, but still…

He let out a sigh and glanced over at Belle. She was still staring out of the window, her head turned away from him as though they were a couple that had fought, and now refused to speak with one another. The tension of it was getting to him. He could feel the tightness in his shoulders, and the headache beginning to become more insistent behind his eyes. He tried to think of something to break the silence. Nothing came to mind.

Rapidly approaching the car in front, Jefferson glanced in the rear view mirror, and then the side mirror just to be sure he wasn’t imagining things. The same car that had been behind them - several car lengths behind - was still keeping the exact pace. He frowned. He was used to playing leapfrog on the interstates he’d driven, not to have the same car with him every time he looked in the mirror. He feared he knew _exactly_ what was going on.

Testing his theory, he slowed down instead of pulling out to pass the car in front. Sure enough, when he looked in the mirror again, the car behind him had slowed. It wasn’t conclusive evidence, but it made the back of his neck prickle. Without a signal he pulled out, floored the accelerator, and took off like a horse of of the gate at the Kentucky Derby. In the time it took him to glance in the mirror again, vehicle that he suspected was tailing them pulled out to overtake the sparse but slower traffic.

“Motherfu—”

“What’s wrong?” Belle cut off his curse mid-word.

He shook his head, and almost apologetically answered, “I think things are about to get ugly.”

“Wh— what do you mean?”

“Don’t turn around,” he began, “but I think we have a tail.”

“What!” Belle started to look as though she was going to turn around in spite of his direction not to, so he caught her shoulder.

“Don’t,” he told her again.

“Who!” she asked, biting her lip, fear obvious on her face.

He shook his head, pouting his lower lip. “One of two choices the way I see it. Law enforcement or the bad guys.”

“Aren’t _you_ the bad guys?”

Jefferson’s eyes narrowed, and his brow furrowed in a frown. He knew he shouldn’t have been hurt by the question, but it stung.

“I told you, I’m trying to help you.” He glanced in the rear view mirror again, catching sight of the car moving up even as he kept his speed barely above the limit. “And right now that means getting away from these guys - whoever they are.”

For a moment he silently cursed not being in his own car, driving stick was so much better for ditching a tail. Still, he’d do what he had to - what he could. Once more he hit the gas pushing the car well above eighty, and at the last minute veered from the outside lane, between two slower moving vehicles and onto an exit ramp. He didn’t care to where.

“Hold on,” he told Belle as he turned off the exit ramp and onto a road that led toward several large retail centers. Either side of the road their lights glowed in competition toward their neighboring fellows, even at such a late hour in the night.

He glanced behind again, hoping he’d been wrong, paranoid, but not expecting to be even as he spotted the car that was now chasing them. Swearing, he took a hard left into a quieter, less gaudy street, and toward a shopping area he could see ahead. Run down and less attractive than the neighboring business, it would afford him the opportunity to act with more aggressive deterrent measures, should the need arise, and he pretty much knew they would.

“Where are we?” Belle’s voice was small from the seat beside him. He shook his head.

“No idea,” he said, and then swore again as the other car came into view just as he ducked into an empty parking lot behind what looked like a disused SmartMart store. He expected to have longer than he did to catch his breath, but it seemed that whoever was following him knew the area better than he, and somehow came in through another entrance. As he straightened the car up in the parking lot, they were there at the other end. He braked hard, and for a moment, seemingly suspended in time, the two of them faced off like gunfighters in a wild west movie. Then, muttering under his breath, Jefferson shifted his foot from the brake to the accelerator, and the tires slipped on the blacktop before finding traction, propelling them forward toward the other car.

“Wanna play with me, huh?” He tightened his fingers around the steering wheel as they drew closer and closer to the other vehicle. Evidently the men inside decided that he really _was_ crazy enough to ram right into them and began frantically scrabbling to pull their car out of the way. They missed by inches, and even through the closed windows, Jefferson heard the tires of the other car screeching as they tried to turn and follow him as he kept going through the parking lot, searching for a way to exit the lot, and hopefully find his way back to the interstate.

After several false turns around the many areas of the lot, he finally spotted a way through the maze of barriers and hedges that separated one section from another, and headed for it, almost able to _see_ the roadway beyond and anticipate the way he’d have to drive upon reaching the road. The people in the other car, however, seemed to have anticipated what he was about, and began drawing up closer, to his _side_ rather than behind. They were trying to force him, to drive him away from where he wanted to go, herding him, pushing him, and since they were on his right hand side, and Belle was riding shotgun, he wasn’t inclined to use his usual tactics to encourage them to do otherwise.

Sooner or later he was going to have to stop trying to err on the side of caution and avoid harming these bastards who were coming after him - for whatever reason - and it seemed that these particular agents - for so he identified them from the car they were driving - held no such qualms about using their own vehicle as a battering ram. Jefferson braked hard when they were up along side him and veering closer, but they seemed to have anticipated that he would, and did likewise, the two vehicles almost mirrors of each other.

“Fuck!” he hissed, as the tactic clearly hadn’t worked, and so instead put his foot down again. The car fishtailed for a moment, and Jefferson’s hands flew first one way, and then the other, to regain control of the car before glancing around to see where they had ended up in relation to the exit he was trying to reach. It was nowhere in sight. He would have to backtrack in order to reach it. With no warning - at least he hoped not - he wrenched the wheel, sending the car into a near spin when, in the next moment he braked again until he was facing the opposite direction, then once again floored the gas even as he was still straightening up the wheel.

It bought him only a moment of time, as soon enough the agents were on him again, this time forcing him toward where a bank of recycling containers stood at the edge of the parking lot, before they dropped back, barely behind him to prevent him from using the same sudden braking tactic to get behind them, and to drive _them_ into the large, heavy metal boxes instead.

“Jefferson…!” Belle yelped as they came closer still, and with nowhere to go, he simply shook his head, cursing under his breath as he had many times that night. If he was lucky, he could pull off the same move he had just executed to turn the car away from danger, in spite of the nearness of the other vehicle. He hadn’t counted on slick, half rotted cardboard beneath his tires.

As soon as he turned the wheel he felt the lightness of the rear of the car, the lack of traction as the car began to go into a spin, the wheels skidding beneath him. He steered into it in a vain attempt to regain control, but clipped the corner of one of the dumpsters. The car rocked dangerously as the momentum threatened to lift one side and send the car into a roll. Somehow he managed to steer rapidly and in a manner to force the wheels to stay in contact with the ground, but it was at the cost of full control. Remaining upright, the car still began to turn into a spin, heading for another of the recycling containers.

They were going to hit it, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The only option remaining was to ensure that the driver’s side was the one that struck the heavy metal bin, and not the passenger side.

The impact, when it came, was a deafening cacophony of sound, Belle’s scream echoed the screech of metal on metal, the tinkling of shattered glass and the dull thuds of many small explosions, before all around him became heat, the scent of burnt ozone, and a blinding expanse of white.


	13. ...Will Go Wrong

By sheer force of Will, Jefferson kept himself from blacking out, even for a second, from the force of the impact and the sudden deployment of the airbags. He knew that if he did they were either caught, or dead, and neither option sounded good to him.

“You’ve nowhere to go, Milnor.”

So they knew his name. It didn’t make much difference to him at that point. They could just as easily have been the bad guys, and he’d blown his cover during that clusterfuck of a takedown, or they could really _be_ agents, with orders to take him in. He’d been under so long it was a distinct possibility that many agents had ‘missed the memo’ as it were, and he didn’t much feel like spending the next several hours locked up before he could get word to his handler and maybe… _maybe_ somehow keep his cover intact. Besides, he didn’t really trust anyone but himself, or the man to whom he was taking Belle to keep her safe.

“No one has to get hurt.” A different voice, but no more friendly, “just step out of the vehicle, and surrender. Give up the girl.”

“Over my cold, dead, and decomposing body,” he murmured as he leaned over to take the gun from the glove compartment. He’d seen it when he was looking for the handcuffs. When he had it in his hand, he pulled out the clip to check that it was loaded, before replacing it, and then doing the same for his own weapon. Then he turned his head to Belle, and released the seat belt before gently pressing on her shoulder to encourage her to slump lower in her chair. “Stay down, and still, no matter what you hear,” he told her softly.

He reached beside him to tug on the handle to release the door, hoping like hell that the impact hadn’t jammed it shut. Luck was with him. It still took a good nudge with his shoulder - and he growled to push back the ache he felt when he did - to get it open a crack before he called out, “Why don’t you just toss your keys on the ground and back away. Let me go!” He took a deep breath and fearing he spoke prophetically added, “That’s the only way this is going down without a fight.”

“No can do,” the first of the men replied. “Be reasonable.”

“That _is_ me being reasonable,” he came back at them with barely a breath. “Walk away, gentlemen. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

He started to slide carefully through the widening gap in the doorway, but was force to duck back inside in a hurry as a shot rang out, accompanied by the whine of a ricochet off the metal of the, now dented, recycling container beside his car.

“That’s the way you want to play it then,” he asked the air in a surprisingly mild voice, given the situation. Then he took a deep breath, pushed open his door as far as it would go, ignoring the way it bounced back off the metal box at his side and, committed, he slipped himself first to one knee behind the door for cover, and then stood suddenly, fired one round in the direction from which shot had come, and turned, a second toward where he estimated the other man to be.

As quickly as he moved out of cover, he ducked back in, sparing a glance for Belle, who was now almost curled up in the foot-well. He felt for her, but knew that if he didn’t get them out of there, things were about to get very complicated. 

He huffed a sigh. They were alread complicated anyway, and about to get more so, and as if to prove his point, several more shots rang out, and ricocheted off the trash container by his head. He swore softly, and gestured to Belle with an outstretched hand to stay down; stay low, before slowly backing away along the length of the car.

He figured that they thought they had him pinned down behind the door. If he were going to get the better of them he had to move from that position; get somewhere where he might be able to see a better way of getting out of the mess they were all in, and to prevent them from forcing him some place he really didn’t want to go. He didn’t much like the odds of that happening though.

The darkness was his ally if not his friend, and he almost made it to the deeper shadows beside what looked as though it used to be a free standing ATM kiosk, before one of the men spotted him. The man called out to his colleague to tell him where Jefferson had gone, and for a moment Jefferson found himself pinned down again by a flurry of gunfire.

As best as he was able under the current assault, he tried to keep an eye on the car, and Belle within it. He knew he couldn’t let them keep him pinned down for long, not if he were going to keep her safe and as if they read his mind, one of the two men began moving toward the car in which Jefferson had left her sheltering from immediate danger.

“Fuck!” he hissed.

With no choice remaining, he had to take action, even if it mean he risked getting shot. If he got hit, or if they got to the car, they’d take Belle anyway, so what was the difference? He couldn’t let them take her. He drew in a deep breath, and using the muzzle flash as his guide, stepped out from cover, weapon raised, and released two shots in quick succession in that direction, before swinging around to fire again into the ground between where he’d last registered the other assailant, and the wrecked car.

He was rewarded by the sudden shuffling of feet as the man that had been heading in that direction pulled back, and having bought himself another few seconds, he ducked back into the lee of the abandoned ATM.

“Give it up, Milnor.” The call came from the man he’d first fired on. “You’re outnumbered. You got no place to go.”

He didn’t answer, but used the respite to circle around the back of the ATM, moving as silently as he could. If he could reach the other side without them realizing he had moved, he’d have the chance to get to at least one of them; to incapacitate the man without resorting to anything more drastic. After all, he still wasn’t sure on whose side _anyone_ truly was.

It wasn’t to be.

Whatever luck had held for him so far gave out and as he moved, light spilled out from somewhere he hadn’t anticipated, revealing his position and drawing a shout of warning from the man he’d driven back away from the wrecked car to the other man, who immediately turned and sent a volley of bullets his way.

He threw himself sideways, into a roll, felt the heat fly past his cheek as he did and thanked whatever gods were looking out for him as his completed his roll and came up to one knee. He fired three shots in quick succession, then heard the soft thud of a body hitting the asphalt.

Knowing he didn’t have time to waste he came to his feet, weapon leading as he half ran, half sidestepped toward where he knew the man had been, kicking the gun away to a safe distance, before leaning down to check the man still had a pulse.

As he straightened up, the darker shadow well over him, and light and heat seared across the top of his shoulder. He turned on pure instinct to see the other man standing barely a car length away, gun outstretched. He raised his firearm, reflexes sharp in spite of the pain. As the other man opened his mouth, no doubt to tell him to surrender, Jefferson shifted his aim and squeezed the trigger.

* * *

As silence after the last single gunshot extended past a few breaths, Belle risked uncurling from the ball she’d squeezed herself into and peeked out through the windshield. She drew in a sharp breath as she saw Jefferson leaning against the hood of the other car - the one that had been chasing them.

Was he hurt? Was she going to be stuck here, not knowing where she was, no phone, no money…

She closed her eyes, trying to steady her breathing. No sense in panicking. That wouldn’t get her anywhere. She felt tears welling in her eyes in spite of the talking to she was trying to give herself. She felt shaky and a little sick. Part of her realized she was probably in shock

She jumped, and gave a little squeak of a cry as the door beside her suddenly opened and Jefferson reached inside to hook her by the arm.

“We gotta move,” he told her. “Come on.”

“What?” she stammered even as she let him help her from the car. “Where? Why?”

“I promise you, I’ll answer your questions,” he said as he began to hurry her toward the other car, “but right now we need to be away from here, and quickly. In a neighborhood like this, someone is bound to have reported the gunfire.”

She looked around her as they hurried across the dim lit parking lot, all but running to keep up with Jefferson’s long stride. Her breathing quickened and she tried to pull away from him as she saw two men lying on the ground, but he held fast to her arm, though he did stop moving.

“I had no choice,” he told her, and in his tone she detected something almost reassuring - frustration, recrimination… sorrow? “I promise you, as soon as we’re out of here, I’ll call for help for them.”

She stared at him for a moment, and then nodded, caught somewhere between suspicion and trust. Tears of uncertainty and confusion brimmed in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. If she started now, she was afraid that she would _never_ stop. 

As if he read her mixed emotions, Jefferson relaxed his hold a little on her arm, and more gently, began moving again toward the car, and helped her to climb in to the passenger side, before he walked around the car - the second, she noted, but only to herself, that he had ‘commandeered’ that day - and leaned in to pop the hood. She heard him, but could not clearly see what he was doing, as he rummaged around in the engine compartment. After several more minutes, she heard the sound of something being wrenched free, and Jefferson’s small grunt, before he dropped the hood back into place and climbed inside the car.

“Okay,” he said softly, “that should give us a little room to breathe, but it would be better to find a car that doesn’t belong to Uncle Sam.”

“How?” she asked, her voice trembling between fear and anger at the thought of him stealing a car from some poor, unsuspecting civilian. He looked over at her as he began to drive toward the exit of the parking lot.

“We’ll drop this off somewhere away from here, and take a Ryde to go pick up my car,” he answered, adding, as though he was once again reading her mind, “No more desperate measures.” She nodded then, feeling a kind of relief until he added, “I hope,” then she turned to look at him again, examining him in the dim light of the abandoned retail lot.

That was when she noticed the tear in his jacket, and the blood stain that had seeped over the front of his shoulder.

“You’re hurt,” she gasped softly, frowning when he shook his head.

“It’s nothing - grazed is all. Jacket came off worse than _I_ did.” Then as though talk of injury had jogged his memory, hi fished out his cell phone and quickly dialed 911. She bit her lip as she heard him answer the rescue dispatch officer on the other end of the line. “This is Agent Jefferson Milnor, FBI. Badge number JTTx97584211, We have agents down…”

She closed her eyes and the rest of his words faded into the the fog of exhaustion that came creeping over her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note on badge numbers: Quick research leads me to understand that not all agencies use badge numbers, and if they do, not all agents within that agency have badge numbers. I therefore confess that the inclusion of Jefferson's badge number is entirely literary license. No need to hit me up in the comments over that on


	14. Fortress

The chiming of the grandfather clock roused Gold from his bitter reverie, and in a single motion he crumpled the single sheet of paper still on the desk beside his hand, and rose to his feet to take it to the fireplace in the lounge. He hadn’t meant to light a fire until morning, but after the message he just received from Jefferson, he knew he would be getting little sleep, and so it would be good to be warm. _Two birds, one stone._

He used the sheet of crumpled paper to light the kindling, onto which he built his fire. He knew he should answer Jefferson, but he wasn’t going to do anything until he was certain of his own safety. Storybrooke had been his haven, a shelter from the threat of unfinished business, and he wasn’t about to put that in jeopardy. Not for any reason.

If they found _him_ , it was only a step of logical thought for them to find Bae, and he was _not_ going to let that happen.

Moving slowly, leaning heavily on his cane, he made his way to the bookcase in the corner of the room, and reaching to the top shelf took down his copy of _Selected Poems of Robert Burns_ and flipped the book open to the back cover, and ran his fingertips along the edge, where the cover met the spine. He quickly found the roughened area where glue had replaced the stitching and with his fingernail, began to chip away at the glue as he walked with the book toward the kitchen.

It was much easier to open the space within the spine of the book where the small, silver key was hidden with the aid of a sharp knife. Still he was careful. He didn’t want to damage the book any more than was necessary to access the key. Once it was in his hand, he set the book down on the kitchen table, and grabbing the flashlight from the small shelf beside the back door, headed out into the yard, and to the basement.

He was careful as he descended the steps, feeling for the edge of each with his cane even while looking at the steps barely illuminated in the dim light given off by the flashlight, and for perhaps the hundredth time reminded himself that he really should rewire the switch to the light so that it was at the top of the steps, and not on a pull cord at the bottom. Still, he reached the floor of the basement without incident and turned on the overhead light.

As he always did when he came down to the basement, he let his eyes settle over the spinning wheel he kept in the corner, beside the small loom. Neither were unused. In fact, he took a strange kind of pride in spinning his own yarn for the crafts he pursued, and the fabric he made on the loom. Some, he sold in the shop, others he used to augment the furnishings in the properties he owned. It was, and he sighed, a legacy of the time he sought to escape - his only _means_ of escape - when the melancholy took him.

He shook it off. He had to. Almost ten years since he’d had any contact with Jefferson Milnor, and he didn’t imagine that after all that time the FBI Agent was contacting him on a whim. It could only mean that the man was in serious trouble.

He edged his way past the wheel, careful not to disturb it, to the door set in the far wall, and pushed the tiny key into the padlock that secured it shut. He stopped then. Why the hell should it matter to him what kind of trouble the man was in…?

_”Really…?” the woman others would have called their mother but who, for him, could never be further from the maternal figure she named herself, swaggered in, hips swaying beneath her crisp black suit. The fascinator perched on the side of her head swayed as she came to a halt, dark feathers waving as though in an imperceptible breeze. “Did you_ really _think I wouldn’t find out what you were planning?_ ”

He stilled in the thrall of a terrible memory. The memory of his debt.

_She stalked toward him, then around, finger trailing around him as she circled him. Her heels made a regular beat against the concrete floor of the hanger._

_“I don’t ask for much,” she said. “You know that. Have you enjoyed privilege so long that you’ve forgotten what loyalty means?”_

_“Loyalty?” he scoffed. Privilege? Us takin’ the risks while_ you _sit around playin’ God? Never a care for what the likes of us must dae to keep ye—”_

_“If you’re going to argue with me, at least have the decency_ not _to sound so beastly!” she snapped. “But, no…” She appeared to be having a conversation with herself. “You know what I expect, and the cost of failing me.” She barely turned her head to instruct, over her shoulder, “Bring the boy.”_

_“No!” his voice rang out but once, before he fell to stammering, “You… y-y- ye can’t. Please, not ma boy… he didn’t ever do_ anything _wrong. Never crossed you. That… that was me - would-a-been-me. Please…”_

_“Oh, please… please don’t… he can’t…” she mocked him. “It’s different, isn’t it, when it’s one of your own?”_

_“Please… don’t… don’t hurt him,” he continued, heedless of her sarcasm._

_She snapped her fingers and the green clad woman stepped up along side two other men who half dragged, half carried the struggling Baethan between them._

_“Papa…!” Bae implored._

_“It… It’ll be all right, Son,” he said, but Fiona interrupted him again._

_“No… no I rather think not. You see, Baethan, your father’s not the man I thought he was, and unfortunately, that means you are the one that has to pain the price.”_

Gold almost physically shook himself to break the replay before it could go further. Night after night he woke to the nightmare of his son’s pain, and the deep explosive sound of the gunshots that saved him… saved them both.

As if in sympathy, a burst of pain spread upwards from his ankle and into his calf, and he leaned heavily on the doorway he had been about to unlock. No… he could not deny that he owed Jefferson his life, and more than that, the chance of life for his son.

With a flick of his wrist, and before he could second guess himself again, Gold released and removed the padlock, and pulled open the door to the room beyond. He reached around the doorway, his fingers brushing cobwebs as he flicked on the light, and then stepped within.

Allowing himself only the further delay of a deep breath, he moved toward a bank of electronic equipment, and flipped the switch to turn it on, watching as one by one lights blinked to life and the muted whir of cooling fans filled the air. As the blinking of lights became steady, he pulled out the sliding shelf on which a keyboard rested, and reached to turn on the screen to the computer, to enter the code, rendered in the same cypher as the one used by Agent Milnor in his message, that would activate the security system.

_Never. Again!_

* * *

“Jesus, Gold, you look like crap!”

“Good morning to you too, Sheriff Swan,” he replied to her greeting as he grounded his cane between his legs in front of him, both hands folded over the ornate handle.

“Yeah,” she huffed, “that too.” Standing from behind her desk, she snatched the bunch of keys from the top of it and began to move toward the two cells, one of which - as usual - was occupied by Leroy. It seemed to Gold like he was either the town drunk, or the town trouble maker. “Come to offer your services to our friend here?” She nodded toward where the man in question sat with his head in his hands, evidently nursing the mother of all hangovers.

“Hardly,” Gold said dryly. “I doubt Mister Maren could afford my services, and even if he could, unless he’s committed a greater crime than drinking himself into a stupor…?”

He trailed off, affording the sheriff the opportunity to fill him in on the details, if there were any to be had. Instead it was Leroy that answered.

“Oh, go to hell, Gold,” he moaned and winced as he raised his head from his hands, squinting at the light as he did so, and then moaned again as the sheriff - deliberately, as far as Gold could tell - rattled the keys against the cell door as she unlocked it. “What would _you_ know about drinking yourself into oblivion.”

_You’d be surprised_ , Gold thought, as the sheriff admonished the drunk to keep his nose clean and not to end up in her cells again for at least another month. Small chance of that, Gold decided as the sheriff turned back to him.

“So, if you’re not here for Leroy, what _are_ you here for,” she asked. “Doesn’t seem like you to be making a social call.”

“Oh, I’m not,” he assured her with a viper smile. No reason he couldn’t kill two birds with one stone, and it might provide him with a better chance to do as he came for. “Simply to remind you that Miss Blanchard instructed me to call upon _you_ for this month’s rent.”

“Ah, shit!” she answered, mumbling to herself afterwards, “I _knew_ there was something I meant to do yesterday.” Then to Gold, she added, “Take a check?”

“I prefer cash,” he said smoothly.

“Of course you do,” she muttered.

“The bank is open,” he suggested, staring down at the pocket watch he had drawn from his waistcoat.

“Can’t leave the station unmanned,” she said.

“I’m certain I could answer any phone calls that might occur during your brief absence,” he said.

“I just—” she began, but he interrupted her.

“After today, I’m afraid I’ll have to impose a ten percent late fee.”

“Ten perc—” she spluttered. “That’s outrageous!”

He spread his hands. “And yet, if you’d care to examine the terms of the lease, which _you_ signed, I think you’ll find it’s quite clear.”

He fixed her with a level stare, until eventually, she threw up her hands.

“Fine!” she said in a tone that told him it was anything but fine. “Don’t touch _anything_. She told him as she pulled her red leather jacket from the back of her chair and shrugged into it as she walked toward the door, calling back, “Except the phone. You can touch that… but only if it rings.”

“What do you take me for, Sheriff Swan?” he asked with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.

“You don’t want me to answer that.” Her voice drifted in from the hall beyond the glass divide.

As soon as she was out of sight, Gold moved around to take the chair behind the sheriff’s desk and pulled the keyboard closer to him. He knew he wouldn’t have much time to do as he needed to, so quickly using a workaround for the not-so-secure Town of Storybrooke municipal server, and then logged himself in through remote access to his own VPN, he accessed the portal to the wider law enforcement networks.

What seemed like centuries ago now, he had created a ghost login with a high security clearance in the event that he had to do something like this; hoping that he never had to.

As soon as he was connected, he ran a search for disturbances and BOLOs in Boston and the surrounding areas.

A shiver of ice stiffened his spine when he read of the multi-agency raid on an estate on the western edge of the Greater Boston area believed to be the center of a human trafficking organization, and a hotbed of drug use and supply. He swallowed hard, recognizing the modus operandi of his mother’s nest of vipers and villains from which he’d managed to make his costly escape. Jefferson had been a young agent undercover then. Was he still?

The raid appeared to have gone badly, with many agents injured, several dead, and he found himself hoping, strangely it felt to him, that Agent Milnor was not among them, but no. The man was like a cat with at least eight of his lives remaining. He knew eight because _he_ had been the one responsible for the loss of the ninth.

Listening for the telltale footfalls that would signal the sheriff’s return, he continued searching, making the assumption that Jefferson had escaped - but where would he go? He heard the squeak of the door - thank the gods for the town’s lack of maintenance - just as he spotted it: the report of an officer involved shooting, well, two officers to be exact and they appeared to have been on the receiving end of said shots, at a disused shopping district several miles outside of Boston. There was an associated BOLO for a stolen Ford Taurus, an agency car, and a warning that the perpetrator was armed and dangerous, and appeared to have a hostage in tow.

It _had_ to be Milnor, but who the _hell_ did he have with him?

Out of time, he quickly emailed the information to himself, shut down his access and switched logins to _guest_ where he pulled up a game of Solitaire and made a few, deliberately careless moves, and was just making a concentrated effort to make a few more when Sheriff Swan walked into the room.

“Gold!” she snapped, and he looked up at her with a sardonic smile. “I _told_ you not to touch anything.”

“You expected me to stand the whole time on this leg?” he tapped his ruined ankle with the end of his cane before looking back up at her with his head tilted to the side.

“And the computer?” she folded her arms across her chest.

“Bored,” he said, then added, “Rent?”

Sheriff Swan came around the side of her desk just as he pushed himself to his feet. She huffed. “Wouldn’t have taken you for a Solitaire kind of guy.” He simply raised an eyebrow, and she fished a stuffed envelope out from her pocket and thrust it in his direction. “It’s all there.”

“I don’t doubt it, Sheriff,” he said as he took it and then moved around her, wound as tight as a spring, but trying to appear as confident as always. He made it all the way to the door before he turned back to her and said, “I’m not.”

“Hmm?” she asked.

“I much prefer the game where you have to work out where all the bombs are hidden.” He wrinkled his nose in a little sneer as he said, “I love the sound they make when they go off.” Then with barely a pause added, “Good day, Miss Swan.”


End file.
